The Collector
by Elizabeth Shawnessey
Summary: John Winchester died eighteen days ago. Dean has been counting every minute of it. As the Impala remains on blocks and Sam keeps himself glued to the computer upstairs, both brothers are at a standstill. When Sam suggests they take a case, the Winchesters find themselves in the middle of something that might lead them right to The Demon. Set after S02E02. Ninth in a series; long.
1. Prologue

**Hold it right there, partner: If you have not read any of the stories in the series leading up to this one, you will be lost. This "episode", while as close to canon as I can make it, has ties to the others in my set. If you read this without reading those, you will find yourself confused as ever. If you have read the previous publications, then carry on. If not, I advise you turn around and do so. Moving on...**

Happy End of the World Day, everyone! I hope you guys are enjoying the apocalypse as much as I am. ;)

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry this took so long. I had a million things to do and fix before I could post it, but now it's done and up! It's not as good as I wish it was, the subject of trying not to step on canon's toes with John's death and The Demon being the most difficult thing in the world, but it'll do. (Also, I just want to say that if something doesn't make sense or feel completed, it's because this is a series and there's planned continuity for things to come.) So, uh, yeah. Enjoy! And, as always, this is viewable on our Tumblr page, 11785!

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PROLOGUE

Cedar Grove Apartments  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Monday, November 20, 2006  
11:57 PM

**B**ryan Jackson popped the top on his tenth beer of the night, kicking back in the shabby recliner positioned in front of the big screen TV he had bought with his last paycheck, and propping his feet up just shy of blocking his view of the Monday night rerun of _WCW Nitro_.

He had had a really crappy day at work, with his boss telling him that he needed to get better at his job or they were going to have to find a replacement, and with his buddy letting him know that the weekend off they were planning to spend down at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, catching a Vikings game, was canceled because he suddenly had to do a double shift on Sunday. As soon as he had clocked out for the day at six, Bryan had started in on the twelve pack sitting in his fridge, something he had been saving for the trip to Minnesota with Dan, and had tuned into the wrestling marathon one of the provided sports channels he paid extra for was showing, something that barely took his mind off of his disappointment.

At thirty-five years old, Bryan hardly ever got to have fun, with his ex-wife calling for child support payments every month, his job hammering at him to do more work for less cash, and the world beating down on him whenever something good came out of all the crap that was piled on top of him. His whole life, Bryan had had it rough, with his parents divorcing at six, Bryan living in a roach motel with his mom at eight, and ten years later, repeating the same thing with his then-girlfriend, Leanne. At eighteen, Bryan had had it all figured out. He was going to go to college, get married, and have The Life, but it didn't work out that way. Barely making rent at the pest-infested apartment he and Leanne had lived in until their first child, Bethany, was born, Bryan had quickly given up on ever making it out of his situation alive, feeling stuck now that he had both Leanne _and_ Bethany to take care of.

By the time he was twenty-two, Bryan had developed a drinking problem that had cost him his wife, his child, and the somewhat-nice place they had moved into with help from the government. Leanne had left him the night he had come home drunk, waving his fist around and smacking her across the face, and had automatically received custody of their kid once the divorce went through. With his record, having been pulled over for a DUI twice in the past six months before Leanne left him, Bryan had had no hope of ever winning the battle that had ended as quickly as it had begun, with Leanne taking off for Tennessee to live with her parents and only calling once every four weeks to make sure Bryan had made out the child support check that was supposed to act as a filler for his absence in Bethany's life.

When Leanne had first left him, Bryan had been between jobs—his career at Dominos finished as soon as the shift manager found out Bryan had been taking home some of the stale pizzas the company was going to throw out anyway. He had had to scramble for work in order to make the six-hundred-a-month cut Leanne wanted as funding to take care of their girl, eventually finding something at a warehouse out in the boonies of Pierre, some storage facility that handled bulk electronic equipment for the big-box stores around South Dakota. It was a lot of physical labor for almost no dough, getting paid the state minimum wage of five dollars an hour for heavy lifting that was worth at least twice that, but it was something, and something was better than nothing.

On the odd day off that Bryan got to experience, the company he worked for not unionized and able to make him work as many days a week as they wanted, he often sat around drinking. In fact, whenever he wasn't working, he often sat around drinking. In his chair, on the bed, in the kitchen, on the patio, in his car, wherever he felt like it, sometimes cracking open a six pack out in the parking lot of the 7-11 he shopped at because he couldn't wait to chug down a cold one. Life was too hard to spend a minute sober, especially a minute that he had to himself. He had too much on his plate to spend it thinking clearly. The more drunk he was, and the quicker he became intoxicated, the better.

Knocking back the rest of the Miller in his hand, Bryan got ready to leave his recliner to get another beer out of the fridge, pushing down the footrest that rose above his head and sitting up. As he wobbled unsteadily toward the blinding kitchen, reaching his hands out for support and to make sure he didn't ram into any walls by accident, Bryan yanked open the cooler and grabbed yet another can from inside the box, tossing his empty one into the corner of the room and not caring that it hit a pile of yeast-filled aluminum that made his home smell like a brewery had mated with a bakery. Opening his drink, Bryan took two pulls as he staggered back into the living room, the sound of his wrestling match on the TV filling the entire apartment with the excited cheers of fans and yelps of announcers at a level that was much too loud for anyone within a mile radius of the television set.

Taking a seat just as Booker T hit Ric Flair with a chair, Bryan relaxed into his recliner, placing his beer on the stool that doubled as an end table next to him, and grabbed the arrowhead he had been playing with for the past few hours since he had been off work. He had found the thing in the parking lot, making a joke by asking John Walkingstick, the only Native American Bryan had ever met, whether or not he had lost it, then proceeded to carry it around in his pocket for the remainder of the day, forgetting about it until he came home, the thing falling out as he placed his wallet on the counter. Though John hadn't found the joke particularly funny—pointing out that arrowheads originated in Africa, not with the Indians—Bryan still thought the small stone spear was cool, picking it up from where it had fallen on his kitchen floor and not able to put it down all through the night.

Flipping it over and over again in his hand just as his show was coming to an end, Bryan continued to watch as the grand finale was about to begin, almost every wrestler on the show coming out through the doors and heading for the ring, the announcers and crowd going wild as Chris Jericho, Diamond Dallas Page, Kevin Nash, Lex Luger, Sting, and Eddie Guerrero all stormed the stage to take down the overly-confident Flair, who seemed to be giving a speech about how he was going to kick every one of their asses directly before they all appeared. As the fans held up their signs and chanted their favorite wrestler's name, Bryan sat up in his recliner, having seen this episode of _Nitro_ years before, but forgetting the end result. He knew Flair was going to get it, that jackass always did, but he forgot how.

However, before he could become wrapped up in the smashing and grabbing that was happening on screen, a knock on Bryan's door ripped him from the action, tearing him away from the set as he lumbered forward to see who was there. Standing angrily, with his arms crossed over his chest, was Bryan's landlord, Paul Schmidt, the scum's greasy hair and stained tank top looking even worse in the night as it did during the daytime. As sweat dripped down the man's forehead, even though it was less than forty degrees outside, Mr. Schmidt scowled deeply, his disapproval of the loudness of Bryan's television obvious in his slimy expression, the man's eyes darting for the set as though trying to convey his message without opening his mouth to say exactly what he was thinking.

"You mind turning that thing down?" Schmidt said after awhile, Bryan standing, leering at him drunkenly, a mischievous smile plastered on his face.

"Yeah, I mind," Bryan said, slamming the door and turning toward the TV, hitting the "volume up" button on the remote to rub it in Schmidt's face that he couldn't tell his tenants what to do just because he owned the building. Bryan paid rent. He wasn't about to be dictated to what he could and couldn't do inside his own home.

Taking a seat back in his recliner just as _Nitro_ began to go off, the show always ending a few minutes early to allow time for sponsors at the end of the broadcast, Bryan started to flip channels, his television set buzzing at the exaggerated sound level, a level that was probably too much for even the state-of-the-art Zenith he had bought not that long ago to handle. Turning the arrowhead over in one hand while he used the other to decide on what show he wanted to settle on next, Bryan spaced out as the channels became a blur, sleep finally getting to him, though the alcohol was taking hardly any affect. While he was staggering and having a problem walking straight, Bryan wasn't feeling his usual, thoughtless self. Instead, all he felt was exhausted, his body feeling drunk while his mind felt fine, though tired.

Ignoring it as he turned the television off, finding that everything good was ending in order to make room for the infomercials that were about to take over the airwaves, Bryan chugged the rest of his beer and threw it into the pile with the rest, not giving a damn how crappy it made his kitchen look, the stack of cans matching his mood. It was a Monday night and he had work in the morning, but was nowhere near ready to go to bed. Most of the time, Bryan drank until he passed out in his recliner, waking up whenever he felt like it, usually hours late for his shift, and rolling in at noon rather than when he was due to start at nine. Though that could partly be the reason why his boss was telling him he needed to get better at his job, Bryan also knew that there were other guys much worse than him that needed replacing, and that even though he knew he was hours late, Dave wasn't about to throw him out on the street, not without a firm warning. The one from this morning had been in passing, though still aggravating, but not an ominous threat like he knew would arise should his boss ever seriously consider trading him up with someone who would probably arrive at work on time.

Pattering around his apartment for a few minutes while he rolled the arrowhead over in his hand, Bryan walked unsteadily back and forth from one end of the living room to the other, his feet not seeming to cooperate with his mind. Eventually giving up to sit down again, Bryan put the arrowhead on the end table and rubbed his hands through his hair, sleep calling for him the longer he stayed awake. By the time he resigned to go to bed, actually planning to snooze under the covers for once, it was only a few minutes before midnight, _Nitro_ apparently ending earlier than usual tonight as opposed to every other time.

Leaving the living room for the bathroom, and grabbing the arrowhead as he went, Bryan flipped on the lights and put the stopper in the sink, turning on the water to wash his face and brush his teeth before sleep could overpower him. As he focused on his task, staring into the water gathering in the basin, Bryan's mind strayed to Leanne and Bethany just like it did every night before he passed out drunk as a skunk. Most of the time, he would just give the room a vocalized "screw them" before he blacked out, but tonight he actually thought about the two girls that had once been in his life and were now miles away. Bethany would be fourteen by now, probably in high school and with some boyfriend Bryan would never approve of, whereas Leanne was probably a nurse like she had always talked about. If he had to guess, the two of them had probably moved out of Leanne's mother's house and into a nice apartment out in Nashville, Leanne always saying she wanted to live in some quaint part of the city Bryan had never been to or heard of.

Shutting off the water as Bryan scrubbed at his face with a washcloth, he stared into the dirty sink, the idea that his house would be clean if Leanne had stuck around, if he hadn't ruined it for both of them, causing him to feel an ache in his chest. Stopping to drop the rag in the bowl in the middle of what he was doing, Bryan rinsed off his face and closed his eyes to keep the soapy water out of them, reaching blindly for a towel to dry his skin before water got everywhere. He knew he was a disappointment to everyone he had ever met, and was getting nowhere in life, instead wasting every minute as inebriated as possible in order to deal. While when he was wasted, he didn't care about any of it, tonight he was strangely sober even after drinking nearly an entire case of Miller, everything getting to him and making him want to do nothing more than grab that arrowhead out of his pocket to flip over in his hand. Though it was a weird urge to have, the small object gave him something to hold onto and mess with while he thought, and it was better than nothing.

However, before he could dig into his jeans for it, something in the mirror caught Bryan's eye as he tossed the towel away, a figure dressed in black standing behind him, empty eyes staring at him through the glass and baring into his soul. Turning around and pushing himself against the sink as though it would offer him protection, Bryan tried to shout to scare the man glaring at him away, his voice coming out as though strangled. The stranger before him, Bryan quickly realized, didn't seem to be normal, with pale skin and a dark stare that scared him, the man clothed entirely in heavy garments as though he were dressed for a funeral. An aura hung around him that was frightening, one that told Bryan that something about this guy wasn't normal, the fear that surrounded him and pierced Bryan being more than just the utter dismay that someone was in his house and standing right in front of him.

"Ge… get…" Bryan sputtered, attempting to tell the man to get out, a sly smile breaking the stranger's face in half as though amused by what Bryan was stammering.

Suddenly, as though in one swift movement, the intruder closed the two feet of space between them and shoved himself up against Bryan, his cold hand clamping itself against Bryan's face and forcing his mouth to open wide. Pushing his other fist past Bryan's lips, Bryan could feel strong fingers wrap themselves around his tongue, causing him to panic and try to push away, the effort becoming futile as the man kept his grip firm.

"Bo. Lop! Hees!" Bryan begged, hoping the stranger would understand.

Not seeming to comprehend, nor hear, him, the man tightened his hold and pulled, pain like Bryan had never known ripping through his body as blood squirted everywhere, the man remaining in place while Bryan buckled over, screaming in agony as red gushed in a flood out of his mouth and onto the floor. Standing over him, the man in black held onto Bryan's scarlet and still-slippery tongue, reaching into his blazer's breast pocket for a handkerchief to wrap it in, and slithering the body part into his coat after a long moment, grinning down at Bryan's violently twitching form as he remained on hands and knees, tears streaming down his face as his skin turned a pale gray.

Within a matter of seconds, the man was gone, Bryan noticing only because he had tried to blindly grab for his pant leg, hoping to beg for mercy or for his intruder to call 9-1-1 to get him help, and had felt nothing but air. Instead, Bryan was left alone in his apartment again, with no one to call for help and with no way to articulate what was going on as blood poured out from inside his mouth and to all over the floor. He was going to die. After all those years of hardship and disappointment, Bryan Jackson was going to die without ever knowing a moment of happiness or excitement.

As the blood became too much, Bryan could feel the exhaustion he had felt prior to entering the bathroom mix with the panic he was feeling and the weakness the gushing red was causing. Reaching up for the doorknob, knowing that he had to get someone's attention before he passed out or died on the spot, Bryan tried to get to his feet, only for blackness to swallow him completely and for his body to collapse underneath him, Bryan Jackson hitting his head on the corner of the sink before collapsing lifelessly in a puddle of his own blood.


	2. One

ONE

Singer Auto Salvage  
Sioux Falls, South Dakota  
Tuesday, November 21, 2006  
6:08 AM

**D**ean Winchester felt lost, broken and lost, and there was no one who could patch it up or make it better. Dad was dead, and Dean felt dislocated from himself. Everything was askew and awry and nothing felt right, nor like it ever would again.

It had been eighteen days since John Winchester's passing. Eighteen long days of cold nights and bright sunlight that felt too harsh and too severe. Life seemed frigid and dank, and Dean felt like he belonged alive about as much as he felt Dad should be dead. His body felt disconnected from his mind, his heart felt like it beat at half the speed, if at all, and everything else felt distant, as though he were standing miles away from things that were right in front of his face.

He was wrong. _This _was wrong. Everything…

The way in which Dad had died, the things he had said right before it happened, chilled Dean to the bone—about as much as, if not more than, the thought that Dean, himself, had been at Death's Door moments before his miraculous recovery. The words that had crossed John Winchester's lips seconds before his youngest son had found him lying lifeless on the hospital room floor had haunted Dean every minute of every day, the clock beginning to tick in the instant of hopelessness Dean had felt when he had been watching the doctors scramble to resuscitate the man who everyone knew to be gone. Dean and Sam had prayed as they stood in the doorway, Dean fantasizing for a few moments that his father would wake up and be fine, while Sam muttered to himself listlessly, urging Dad to move or stir; but all of that had been for nothing. The doctors had called it without giving it much effort. They already knew. There had been no hope from the moment Sam had screamed for help in the hall.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that the way the man had died had been strange, as well as the certainty that came with the way Dad had spoken to Dean beforehand, squirreling Sam out of the room on a faux coffee run just to have a few seconds alone with his eldest. As soon as Dad had told Dean to watch out for Sammy, Dean had gotten the inkling that something was wrong, but he had never imagined that it would be his father's end. His whole life, Dean had always imagined Dad to be able to withstand anything, had seen as much in the times that he had gone hunting with the man, but to see him on that hospital bed, the defibulators working overtime as they attempted to resurrect someone who was long past gone, Dean had felt something he had never felt before: vulnerable. Dad had been there to protect him his entire life, and even when he was off on some hunt, tracking down the demon that had evaded them and caused the wreck that had placed them in separate rooms of the South Dakota State Hospital, Dean had felt that he was shielded from anything bad that could ever happen to him and his brother. But now Dad was gone and Dean was lost, Dean having to take Dad's place in his absence and watch out for Sammy just like his father had asked.

But it wasn't easy. Any of it. Especially not after what had been whispered in his ear prior to the final curtain call of John Winchester. It was as though those few simple sentences had changed Dean's perspective on his brother, changed the way he looked at him, and the way he felt about Sam's sudden obedience to the man who had left Dean in charge of a mess that had been piling up for the past twenty-three years. His brother would never know what had been said, Dean would never put that weight on him nor burden him with the idea that there was more to the story with The Demon than either of them had initially known, but the thought was there all the same, whispering in his ear like an annoying little bird that would never let him forget what had been uttered.

As Dean sat out in Bobby Singer's back yard, an ever-cooling cup of coffee in his hand and the nippy air biting at his skin as he remained in a t-shirt and jeans in the cold November daybreak, he kept his eyes focused on the brightening sky. He had been parked out on top of one of the numerous rusting cars since before four in the morning, his gaze fixed on the stars that were disappearing overhead while his brain tried to process everything that had happened over the past year. On Halloween in 2005, Dean had arrived at Stanford to pick up his little brother in an attempt to track down their father, the man going missing in the middle of Dean's private hunt in New Orleans. If Dean had known then what he knew now, the problems and pain that would occur from the moment he had stepped through Sam's darkened doorway, he would've turned back and allowed his brother to remain how he was and leave his father to be how _he _was. The three of them living separately on their own paths, miles away from one another and with no phone calls left returned, was better than how they had ended up. Dean would forgo his newly-forged relationship with Sam, the way the two of them seemed to get along better than ever, if that meant Dad was alive, if that even meant Sammy's girlfriend was alive. One by one, the brothers seemed to be losing the people they loved, and it seemed to all start and end with the moment Dean had broken into Sam's apartment in California.

However, Dean didn't shoulder the blame on his own. Though he wanted more than anything to pile every ounce of hate and anger upon himself, he knew that there was someone, or rather some_thing_, else that took the heat as well. The Demon, the same one that had killed his mother and sent his father on the hunting spree that had been his demise, the same one that had murdered Jessica in cold blood the night Sam had returned home from helping Dean attempt to track down Dad, was equally responsible for everything that had taken place between that holiday and the hole in Dean's chest. If it hadn't been for that evil son of a bitch, the Winchesters would have been happy, would have been normal. Sam would have gone to school and grown up to be whatever he wanted, with Dean possibly experiencing the same opportunity. Dad and Mom would have lived long and happy lives, their house wouldn't have been burnt by Hellfire, and they might have even owned a dog. In Dean's mind's eye, in the times that he imagined life without hunting, he had always envisioned having a real home, something that was more than the motel rooms and backseats he had grown up knowing, something that was like all of those technicolor families on TV. But now he had none of it, and would never have any of it, all thanks to The Demon that _had_ ruined and _was_ ruining everything that Dean and Sam had ever hoped to be.

Sitting up straighter against the cracked windshield of the burnt-orange station wagon he was currently perched on top of, Dean took a sip of his coffee and sighed, his face falling with the motion as he looked up at the overcast sky. Of all the days he had been at Bobby's—all the days that Sam had spent inside, attempting to dig up information on finding The Demon or The Colt, hibernating by the computer at night—Dean had seen maybe one or two gray days, the sun always shining overhead as though mocking him with its brilliancy. On most days, when Dean woke up with a headache from drinking or thinking too much, he hated the bright yellow that greeted him every time he stepped out of Bobby's home and into the converted mechanic's garage that housed the still-wrecked Impala. It seemed ill-fitting and scornful, the unsullied illumination that cast a ray on every aspect of the shattered mess that was his life, and Dean hated every moment that the sun was up, preferring to do his work in the shade or at night, Bobby's yard fit with floodlights that provided enough to see by. But this, with the gray that was darkening every second that the dawn became morning, was a change Dean welcomed, a weather that seemed to match both how he felt inside and how he viewed the world now that Dad was gone.

As birds sang off in the distance, their twitter almost a murmur in the vastness of Singer Salvage and the auto graveyard that surrounded him, Dean tried to take a moment to clear his mind of everything except for his sole task of finishing fixing the Impala. She was almost done, maybe a new muffler and front tire away from being restored, and Dean had all day to get his baby back up to her former glory, a fresh coat of paint being the last step in the reinstatement of the one thing Sam and Dean had to hold onto in this world. When she was finished, Dean would be able to breathe a little easier, he wouldn't feel as trapped as he did without wheels or without anywhere to go. He and Sam could hunt until they couldn't hunt anymore once his baby was up and running. It would give them both something to keep their minds off of Dad and something to look forward to, which was what they needed now more than ever. With Dean's deepening guilt and Sam's permanently-fixed expression that seemed a mix of heartbroken and confused, Dean felt the need to get the Impala done and the brothers on the road. If he spent any more time at Bobby's—especially with his days starting off with coffee before switching to beer before noon even hit, his thoughts too heavy to be processed sober—Dean would drive himself up the wall. As much as he felt lost and broken, Dean also felt that getting back on the road would give him a sense of purpose, give him something to do rather than blame himself for every bad thing that had ever happened to his family.

Somewhere yards from him, Dean could hear the sound of Bobby's back door slamming shut, the screen making a whining sound as it bounced back into place. Dean didn't have to look to know who was coming his way. Bobby was gone, off working some case somewhere else, leaving the brothers alone with both his house and his tools, Sam using the computer that was permanently stationed upstairs to try to do research on The Demon when every call they made to Ash, their demon-tracing acquaintance from a job ago, went unanswered, Ash probably just as lost on this demon thing as they were. Though both brothers knew Sam wasn't going to find anything if their new friend and his MIT education wasn't turning out results, it wasn't for lack of trying, especially given that spending time online worked as a way to deal with Dad about as much as Dean's constant work on the Impala seemed to be. It took their minds off of the fact that they were now well and truly on their own in this world, every reminder of it stinging like a blade covered in salt. Thinking about something else helped. It didn't erase the pain, but it masked it long enough to take things one step at a time.

"Hey," Sam muttered as he leaned up against the hood of the car, Dean not moving or returning the greeting.

For a long time, the two of them remained where they were, Sam standing with Dean sitting. In the days since Dad's death, neither brother had said much of anything to one another if it didn't involve something supernatural, Dean always snapping at Sam for pushing for Dean to talk about his feelings, and Sam always looking so disconcerted when Dean turned him down and told him to shove it. It had become a circle of anger that Dean had wanted to break, everything that was weighing on his chest becoming heavier whenever Sam turned a disappointed eye toward his older brother. At times, Dean had to remind himself that Sam didn't know what he knew, what Dad had said prior to his departure, but at other times, that fact didn't seem to matter. Whenever the two yelled or butt heads over topics ranging from nothing to anything, Dean didn't care much for what Sam knew, the immensity of pain piling on top of Dean seeming too much to bear at times, with Dean having no outlet to channel it into aside from the brotherly outbursts. As much as not having the Impala up and running made him feel trapped and immobile, so did the information Dad had dumped on top of him. There was no one Dean could tell about what had happened. He was going to have to bury it underneath everything else, a bottle of booze working as a dampener to keep the edge off.

"You come out here for something?" Dean asked, attempting to keep his tone from sounding hostile, despite the fact that he was irritated that his alone time was being disrupted. Sam knew from experience that his older brother wanted nothing more than to be isolated for now, Dean using the break from discussions and arguments to focus on his one task of working on his car, that being the only thing on this planet keeping him from going insane.

Bunching his jaw, Sam stared out at the quiet day, his eyes searching the acreage around them as though looking for a sign as to what to say and how to say it. "I got a call from Ellen this morning. She said she might have found us another case if we're interested."

"Is that right?" Dean asked, pursing his lips. "What is it?"

As he listened to his brother describe the details of the job that Ellen Harvelle—the owner of a roadhouse that catered specifically to Hunters, a woman Dad had known years ago and had had a falling out with before he died—had found, Dean could feel his mind escape elsewhere. Though he understood that his brother wanted something more to do rather than sit behind the computer all day, attempting to track down a demon that didn't want to be found, Dean also knew that Sam's sudden interest in hunting had been sparked by Dad's passing, as though Sam was trying too hard to remember the man in a way that would make him proud. While Sam had admitted that it had been too little too late, that didn't seem to deter him from taking hunts whenever he found them—or whenever they were delivered to him by phone.

"I tried to dig up the pathology reports online, but it looks like the county records haven't been updated yet," Sam finished. "Though I gotta tell you, Dean, someone's tongue being ripped clean out of their mouth definitely sounds like something we should check out."

Taking a sip of coffee, Dean remained still for a moment as he processed what his brother had said, Dean silently debating whether or not taking a case while the Impala was still up on blocks was a good idea. In his own head, Dean had promised himself not to take another job until his baby was back on track, but Ellen hand-delivering one to the brothers threw a wrench in that cog. While he could easily say no and spend the rest of his day listening to Sam grumble about how they should have taken a trip to wherever this thing had happened, Dean wasn't in the mood to both do that _or_ leave the comforts of Bobby's house. Tapping his fingers against the mug he was drinking out of for a minute, Dean glanced over at his brother and his freshly-showered appearance, Sam obviously ready to go at a moment's notice whereas Dean had no intention of moving from where he sat.

Relaxing his shoulders for a moment, Dean placed the I Heart Sioux Falls mug down on the hood of the car and slid to his feet, his brother's gaze switching from the expectant puppy-eyed glare Dean had fallen victim to to the grin of someone who had gotten his way.


	3. Two

TWO

Cedar Grove Apartments  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Tuesday, November 21, 2006  
10:19 AM

**I**f there was one thing Sam Winchester didn't want to think about, it was the last time he had seen his father. Dad had been lying there lifeless on the floor, his broken arm collapsed against his chest as it remained still, his entire body nothing more than a shell of the former indestructible man it had once been. In the middle of the night, Sam often heard himself scream for help from the doctors, sometimes felt the brush of their white coats against his skin as they pushed him away and hauled his father onto the bed right beside him, and occasionally dreamt that they were able to revive the man who had dropped dead without any warning or without any rhyme or reason behind it.

There was a hole that had been left behind by Dad's passing, one that was shared between both Sam and Dean. As the minutes ticked by and the days turned into weeks, the void that had been struck the second the doctors had called time of death became a chasm that was ever-widening. Sam, in his own way, attempted to deal with the loss by turning his interests elsewhere, focusing on finding The Demon and The Colt that eluded them and had gone missing the day John Winchester had died—the coincidence of the two not lost on Sam, his notice of it piquing the longer he scoured the web for information. While Dean worked on the car, Sam glued himself to every book around the house or the one computer stationed upstairs, every search he conducted leading him nowhere in terms of tracking down the things the brothers needed in order to get on with their lives, both objects going hand-in-hand when it came to finally putting the mission that had been pressed upon them since they were children to rest.

But there was something more that Sam needed from the demon that had escaped them, something that Dean would never understand nor know. Sam needed answers. The night before the accident, the demon had admitted something that had rocked Sam in a way that he would never be able to shake until It was dead: _"My plans for you, Sammy. You… and all the other children like you."_ In all the time that he spent alone inside of Bobby's house, perched upstairs at the desk or in the drawing room on the couch, Sam had been unable to place a meaning to the words that haunted him as much as his last memory of his father. While Sam knew that he wasn't alone in being Chosen—as he had once put it upon meeting someone else cursed with a sudden gift, an ability that had started around the time he had turned twenty-two—it bothered him to know that The Demon was up to something more than the usual hellish hijinks. For the most part, demons had no master plan or ulterior motive. All they cared about was random chaos and hysteria. Why this one, out of all the others, had some kind of scheme that went beyond plane crashes and haphazard possessions, Sam didn't know, but he was itching to find out in a way that he could never convey to his brother, Dean not likely to comprehend his hunger for an explanation as to what his future held.

Sitting back in the front seat of the red-and-white 1968 Ford Ranger Dean had stolen from the parking lot of the Cooper Carnival, the location of their last job that had left them stranded without transportation, Sam stared out the window as the rural highway they were taking into Pierre, South Dakota passed underneath the truck's bouncy, shock-less tires. For the past three hours, Sam had been doing nothing but taking in the scenery that whipped around them in a blur of brown and gray, their drab surroundings matching the mood that Sam seemed permanently affixed to, one that was somewhere between depression and frustration. Every now and again, as the mile markers became nothing but a forgotten memory in the rearview mirrors and signs disappeared into dirt-paved driveways, Sam could hear his brother grumble, the spring of their vehicle's cab becoming heavier the more uneven the road became. Occasionally, Sam could pick up his brother's aggravated mutterings, his main topic being the fact that they should have held onto Dad's truck for moments like this, Sam understanding that Dean was irritated with his brother for forfeiting it in an attempt to shoo away the girl that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

The past year for Sam and Dean Winchester had been nothing short of a bumpy roller coaster that seemed to have fallen off the rails sometime before the ride had begun. Back in the previous October, when things had been simpler and easier, Sam's life of school and normalcy had been interrupted by an appearance from his older brother on Halloween, Sam and Dean not seeing each other for a long time before that, their relationship divided the night Sam had decided to leave hunting behind for college. For two years prior to Dean's abrupt arrival, Sam had been attending Stanford University, going to classes and earning good grades, and had eventually managed to get himself a girlfriend and a nice apartment close to campus—the place beating out all the dives the Winchesters seemed to frequent, thought the monthly payments hurt his wallet enough to make him long for the sleazy motels that had filled in as a home. In all the time that Sam had been gone, he had been blissful, his life away from demons and darkness calming him as he settled into something average and accountable.

When Dean had arrived, Sam had known something was wrong, his brother having left Sam alone ever since he had ditched the family business for school. Unfortunately, Dean's appearance had meant more for Sam than he was sure his brother had intended. After listening to Dean attempt to coax him away from his cozy apartment and back into the depths of hunting, Sam had agreed on the grounds that he would be allowed to return to the life he wanted so badly afterward, something itching at the back of his mind that was more than being caught off-guard by his brother suddenly standing before him. Though he tried to take his time inside, his girlfriend, Jessica, worried and talking to him while he got ready to go, Sam had had a feeling that leaving would be a mistake, a heaviness in his chest making his movements slow as he attempted to brush off the thoughts echoing inside his head.

As soon as Sam and Dean were once again back on the road together, the ease of hunting as a team returned to them as though it had never left. As the two worked on what had pushed them into pairing up again—the case at hand, a Woman in White haunting a stretch of road in Jericho, California, and the fact that Dad had up and disappeared in the middle of a job without much of a warning to either of his sons—Sam fought hard against himself as he recognized the quickness in which he resumed the lifestyle he wanted nothing to do with, his two years away from it meaning nothing and seeming erased as he worked as though he had been at it the entire time he had retired. Before long, the ghost was in the ground and the brothers were returning to Stanford, their search for Dad ending in nothing but the discovery of his journal and his motel room.

However, as soon as Dean had pulled his beloved black, 1967 Chevrolet Impala up to the curb outside of Sam's off-campus apartment, the heaviness in his chest began to thud, a dark cloud hovering over him as he stepped out of the vehicle and onto the sidewalk, Dean calling out to him but Sam barely responding as his mind went elsewhere. It hadn't taken long before his worst nightmare had been realized, his trip away from home costing him everything he had within seconds of walking through the door. Before he had left, he had seen things while he had been asleep, sadistic things that he had thought to be only his imagination, things that became real the moment he had lied down on the bed.

The fire had been quick and swift, swallowing the apartment whole, with Sam only making it out alive thanks to his older brother. The cops had wanted to know how it started, the detectives had wanted to know what he had seen, and the insurance companies wanted to know who to make the check out to, but all of those things had been forgotten in Sam's grief and in Dean's persistence that they leave town to put it behind them and to follow Dad on the trail he was leading them down.

At first, in the beginning stages of rejoining Dean on the road, Sam had been angry, not at his brother, but at himself. He had become so engulfed in depression and frustration that he hadn't slept, his aggravation coursing through him even when he was unconscious and causing him to relieve the moment Jessica had called down to him from the ceiling in which she had been pinned, her stomach bleeding and dripping onto his head, before the flames had licked the walls and exploded behind her. Initially, Dean had kept his mouth shut as Sam stayed awake, watching George Foreman infomercials until four in the morning before heading out for a coffee run, but hadn't remained quiet for long. Though his brother kept persisting for Sam to deal with his angst in a way that kept him both in the game and awake enough to keep from getting killed on hunts, Sam had a reason for gluing his mouth shut, the sense that his dreams were more than dreams bothering him well until he discovered he was right.

In all the time that the brothers were on the road, chasing after Dad and taking random jobs in order to pass the days that weren't spent waiting around in a motel room for clues as to their father's whereabouts, Sam had started to feel as though there was something wrong with him, a tiny voice in his ear telling him that he had known that Jessica was going to die the way she had for nearly a week beforehand. As the months progressed, Sam had taken to trying to understand what was happening to him, a particularly odd case back in Lawrence of a poltergeist taking possession of their old house proving to Sam that something inside of him was changing. Though that hadn't been the only instance that had scared Sam into knowing he was different, it had been the first, the moment that had sent him on the path to officially worrying that something about him was wrong.

It hadn't been until the encounter with Max Miller that Sam had started to understand what was happening—started to, but never fully grasped it, especially not now after The Demon's haunting words. The kid had been able to move things with his mind, his mother dying in a nursery fire just like Sam and Dean's mother had when Sam was six months old, and had been killing members of his family with his newfound ability. While he had been there, Sam had experienced visions that were unlike anything he had ever seen, the vividness and sharpness of them scaring Sam into thinking his startling aptitude was advancing. Though Max hadn't lived long enough for Sam to find out more, to see if he knew anything that would give reason to what was going on with both of them, it had scared Sam into burying his curiosity, the idea that their sudden gifts were dangerous keeping him from digging further into the deep.

Months had passed before anything else had happened, causing Sam to somewhat forget his abnormality in lieu of finding Dad and hunting down The Demon. As the brothers worked together on killing anything from spirits to rawheads to pagan gods, hunting began to swallow Sam whole, his tiny hope of returning to a normal life becoming extinguished the night the brothers finally reconnected with their father in Colorado, a nest of vampires stirring up trouble and forcing John Winchester to work with his sons on a case. From there, the three had teamed up, ignoring their differences and unspoken arguments in an attempt to get the vamps in the ground and their lives back on track. By the time they had finished the job, Sam and Dean had convinced Dad to let them help in trying to track down The Demon, both brothers making the argument that they were in this together, that this wasn't just Dad's hunt. Unfortunately, their effort to search out the thing that had disrupted their family so badly had been the last thing the three would ever do together again, The Demon showing up to try to stop them before they could put a bullet through its head.

In all the time that he had been gone, searching out The Demon and working alone, Dad had been looking for something else, something equally as important to the cause: a gun crafted in 1835 by forger Samuel Colt, one that had been especially made to kill anything, demons included. By the time Dad had finally gotten his hands on it, only five bullets remained of the original thirteen set, almost all of them except for one being expended not long after it had been acquired. The first one had been used on the leader of the vampire nest the Winchesters had infiltrated, whereas three more had been used against The Demon and his horde when the brothers and their father had been given no choice during a fight that would have gone from bad to worse had the weapon not been fired—The Demon possessing Dad and not letting go until Sam had squeezed off a shot that scared it away. Unfortunately, the last time the gun had been seen had been moments before their father died, The Colt eluding them as promptly as The Demon had, the ties between all three incidents becoming a conundrum that Sam was intent on solving.

Before he had passed, during the couple of days the Winchesters had spent in the hospital, Dad had been obsessed with getting his hands on the gun, the fact that the car wreck they had been in, the one that had sent them to the South Dakota State Hospital and had put Dean in a coma, becoming a lost issue as Dad focused solely on obtaining the weapon from the trunk of the smashed Impala. As Sam worked tirelessly on finding a way to yank Dean away from Death's Door, Dad seemed to have an ulterior motive, sending Sam to Bobby's in order to gather ingredients to summon the demon in some kind of act of revenge. Though Sam had followed his father's commands, not seeing any way out of not giving him what he asked for, he had known that something was wrong, the way Dad disappeared at the height of the dilemma with Dean proving as much.

However, the fact that Dad had appeared right when Dean had miraculously recovered, then died a minute later with The Colt missing and The Demon gone, pointed to foul play, though just on whose side the blame lied remained a mystery. As soon as their father was pronounced dead, the brothers had been distraught and homeless, their car wrecked and their family disbursed, the two of them what was left of the Winchester line. Heading to the only place they knew they could go, Sam and Dean had gone straight to Bobby's, the man welcoming them in and watching over them like a hawk that wouldn't let them out of his sight. While Dean worked on the car and Sam read, Bobby tried to make them comfortable, asking if they needed anything every now and again to make sure they were as close to alright as they could get.

Unfortunately, Sam, who had been milling over what had occurred for twenty-four hours without rest right after it had happened, had been unable to put his mind at ease as he attempted to sort through what had gone down, the fact that Dad's death didn't click in his mind, the doctor's diagnosis of a cardiac arrest not making sense to him, keeping him awake. In a fit of frustration, Sam had taken his issues up with Bobby, wondering if his friend could shed light on the subject, but only getting turned down as the older man remained tight-lipped. Though Sam had a feeling Bobby Singer knew more than he was letting on, he also had a feeling there was no way he was going to be able to coax it out of him. Resigning to sorting it out on his own, and knowing that keeping at it would cause Bobby to stay away until the younger Winchester got the hint, Sam had taken up his post at the upstairs computer, only moving every now and again whenever he got tired of reading useless websites and became set on searching for something more concrete.

Ultimately, though, there had been more than one Winchester-related issue that needed to be resolved, something that probably never would be, given both brother's attitudes toward the matter. During the summer, between a couple of cases in Maine and the South, Sam and Dean had met someone that rattled their cages just as badly as Sam's premonition revelation. There had been a girl that had been watching them, her green-eyed stare and connection to Dad blatant once the brothers started looking for it. They had cornered her out in the lot of a diner in Brewer, the girl stumbling over her words but admitting enough to send both Sam and Dean into a rage that was unconquerable. As soon as she had called John Winchester "Dad", that had been it, the brothers wanting to call her a liar but only getting their worst suspicions confirmed by their own father.

Though neither Sam nor Dean had seen her more than once following the encounter in Maine, Sam sometimes caught himself wondering about her, his interest quickly turning to irritation the moment he realized his father had lied to him for twenty-something years. The day after Dad's death, Sam had remembered the girl from the diner, his fingers wrapping around her necklace in his pocket before giving Bobby the task of relaying the bad news about what had happened to John. For some reason, something he couldn't explain, Sam had kept the shining silver crucifix he had found in Dad's abandoned motel room in Bayview, the fact that it served as a constant reminder of his father's betrayal possibly being the leading cause. However, Sam felt it was more than that, as though it grounded him somehow, gave him a perspective on everything that bothered him the moment he touched it. Though Dean didn't know that Sam had the thing in his pocket, and would most likely be furious as the idea of his brother holding onto something that belonged to That Girl, as Dean called her, he couldn't bear to part with it, something in his gut telling him it was important.

Unfortunately, the last time they had met, Sam had been too caught up in the moment to return it. The surprise of her visit to Bobby's, toting Dad's discarded truck in tow, had placed it in the back of his mind, further still when Dean came out to tell her to leave with the same amount of tact he used on the creatures they hunted and killed. While she had been there, Sam had noticed something about her that disturbed him, something that felt different, a vibe resonating off of her that seemed dangerous and severe. Suddenly wanting to get rid of her just as badly as his brother had, Sam had passed off Dad's truck to her without a second glance, the argument with Dean that followed becoming short-lived the moment she had driven off in the old GMC, Sam conceding that he agreed with his older brother not long after. Smug in that disclosure, Dean had given him a tight-lipped smile before returning to his work on the Impala, all discussion of her forgotten between them despite the fact that Sam retained the crucifix, never taking it out for anyone to see except to show Bobby that he had it.

In truth, Sam didn't know whether or not he ever wanted to know her, Dean's obvious hatred of her giving him pause whenever he gave her any sort of thought. To them, she was just a stranger, and Sam had a feeling it would be better for all of them if she remained that way. Though Sam knew nothing about her aside from where she lived and where she went to school, the Internet providing as much, he wasn't sure if he wanted to know. If she was a Hunter, it would be better if they stayed away from each other; if she wasn't, better still. Sam and Dean lived dangerous lives. They couldn't afford to keep contact with anyone who wasn't already in the game, or even someone who was, but that didn't stop Sam from being curious.

Snapping out of his train of thought as Dean slowed the Ford to a stop outside of an apartment complex, Sam bunched his jaw as he took in the filthiness of the exterior of the Cedar Grove Apartments, the sign welcoming them in covered with dirt and graffiti that looked as though an unpracticed teenager had done it. Before they had left, Sam had looked up the victim's, Bryan Jackson's, home address, telling his brother that it would be a good place to start looking for information, Dean still having a problem accepting cases from someone who wasn't either of them or Dad. Though it seemed as though this job was a little far-fetched, someone's tongue getting ripped out of their mouth inside of a locked apartment with no one hearing or seeing anything, Sam was willing to give it a shot, no matter what Dean did or said.

"Well, this looks cozy," Dean muttered sarcastically as he pulled into an empty spot and shut off the Ranger's whining engine, popping open the door to the driver's side and getting out, his knees cracking from the long drive between Pierre and Sioux Falls. "I feel like I'm going to get a disease just by looking at it."

Ignoring his brother's grumbling, especially given he had heard it for years and knew that it meant nothing, Sam slipped out of the passenger's seat and grabbed the duffle placed in the middle of the bench, the bag having been positioned between the brothers the entire drive into South Dakota's state capital, some of the weapons inside digging into Sam's leg whenever they hit a particularly rough bump. Swinging it over his shoulder and shutting the door, Sam looked over at the grungy building, noticing that each apartment was stacked as a duplex, all lined up in a row of eight, and each holding doors that had been painted a navy blue against the faded yellow of the building—some of them containing dirty numbers and some of them shining with brass.

If Sam had to guess, he would assume that Bryan Jackson's apartment would be no better on the inside as it was on the outside. Unfortunately, trash bags in the bushes, dead plants lining the sidewalk, and junker cars out in the lot aside, the brothers had a job to do and the only way to do it would be to head for Apartment C on the lower level of the complex. Hitching the duffle from where it had slipped down his arm, Sam bit his lip as he looked over at Dean, seeing that his brother was nodding slowly in acceptance, the idea that there was a possible hunt upon them causing Dean to focus in on the task at hand.

"Let's do this, then."

Smirking to himself at his brother's remark, Sam nodded as well, taking the first steps toward Bryan Jackson's apartment and leading the way inside.


	4. Three

THREE

Cedar Grove Apartments  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Tuesday, November 21, 2006  
1:19 PM

**A**s the door to Bryan Jackson's apartment drifted open, Dean could hardly stand the smell that wafted out into the quiet afternoon breeze. In his time, he had been in the midst of various foul odors, most of them created by bodies that had been left to rot or creatures that had used some sort of horrible stench to mark their territory, but this was worse than anything he had ever encountered.

In the minutes that it had taken Dean to pick the front door's lock, Sam had given him enough of an overview on the guy to know his story. Apparently, according to the research Sam had conducted before they had left for Pierre, Bryan Jackson was a divorced bachelor who had had various reports filed on him at work—tardiness and lack of get-up-and-go being the two major ones, along with a singular incident of the man coming in drunk. As he listened to his brother spout off information he didn't particularly care to know, details about the divorce agreement and the custody hearing over the once-couple's daughter, Dean had already managed to form an opinion of the guy, though his assumption hadn't included hygiene habits.

From what he could see, among the acrid smell of old cigarettes, moldy beer cans, and building dust, Bryan Jackson lived up to be everything Dean had supposed: a man who lived alone and cared about nothing at all. Though that was a harsh conclusion to draw, especially given the fact that Dean only knew what Sam had told him, he couldn't help but feel as if he knew the type, Dean having entered many places like this before that had been owned by someone exactly as he presumed their latest victim to be.

Heading inside the apartment, Sam and Dean fanned out as soon as the door was shut behind them, both brothers taking separate spaces and searching high and low for something that would give them a clue as to what might have happened the night before. While Dean was still disbelieving that there was a case here, he was still curious enough to look, the idea of going through someone else's stuff tantalizing to him, no matter the reason. However, as soon as he began searching through drawers and cabinets in the kitchen while Sam checked out the living room, Dean could feel his thoughts float away from the task at hand and back toward something else.

Sam and Dean had met Ellen and her daughter Jo, as well as their friend Ash, back at the Roadhouse out somewhere in the middle of Nebraska, the woman leaving a voicemail on one of Dad's phones that the man had saved for months. Though Sam had been curious enough to investigate, even urging his brother to come along, Dean had been hesitant, only wanting to stay where he was and finish his work on the Impala rather than get tangled up with some woman who apparently knew Dad but didn't know them. While they had been there, during Sam's fit in trying to appease their father's memory by doing everything he thought the man would want him to do, the brothers had taken a case from the woman, Ellen applauding them for their good work once they were done, and even offering up a couple of beds in case they wanted to stay the night, a request Dean had politely turned down.

Ultimately, though, Dad-approved or not, Dean wasn't up to trusting any more people or welcoming them into his life, especially not now. Taking a case from someone who they hadn't known for more than minute was grounds for Dean to be suspicious, despite the fact that Ellen had proven to be trustworthy so far. With everything that he had learned about demons since what had happened with his father, Dean wasn't about to go rushing into a job head-first without being apprehensive—Sam taking the opposite stance and apparently throwing caution to the wind, confiding in these people as soon as he had met them. Though that had yet to turn out to be a bad thing, with Ash helping the brothers decoded their father's demon-tracking chicken scratch, Dean knew it was only a matter of time. Nothing good ever happened whenever Hunters teamed up, especially not ones who hardly knew one another.

Focusing back in on what he was doing, Dean kicked his thoughts away and continued his search of the kitchen, pulling open the refrigerator door and recoiling as soon as the smell of rotten fruit carried out like a cloud of horrible musk. Gagging and burying his nose in the crook of his arm, Dean slammed the door shut and deemed the kitchen finished, every nook and cranny more or less inspected. Heading into the living room just as Sam was pushing the solitary chair in the middle of the floor back into place, Dean shook his head as his brother did the same, Sam's eyes traveling down the hallway as though indicating where they should go next.

From what Dean had heard, Bryan Jackson had been found in the apartment's one bathroom, the police having paid special attention to it and saying as much in the article Sam had all but read aloud before getting into the car on the way over. If that was true, that the cops had scoured the room up and down, that meant Sam and Dean were in for hell, every officer they had ever met always messing up every supernatural crime scene the brothers had encountered, the uninformed police always wiping away important evidence that could turn a case on its head. Though Dean wasn't too excited to search the bathroom, especially given the filthy condition of the rest of the house, it was their next step and probably their last, the living and kitchen areas important to check first in case there were signs of a break-in that the cops had missed—such as sulfur that would signal a demon in the windowsill or ectoplasm leaking in through the faucet hanging over the sink.

Following his brother's lead down the short hallway, Dean and Sam stopped shoulder to shoulder in the archway squaring off the bathroom, the linoleum floor that had once been colored a tan and white pattern stained red with blood and brown with dirt. Taking a minute to survey the scene, and noticing that the bathtub had a disgusting ring of gunk around it as well as the mirror being covered with black spots that signaled mold, Dean pursed his lips before heading in, Sam staying out in the hall since the room was only big enough for one of them.

Checking every crevice, and lifting up old newspapers that had become glued to the built-in magazine rack beneath the basin, Dean wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans when he was done, his gaze stuck on scanning the floor as if his mind was telling him that he was missing something. Furrowing his brow as Sam shifted his weight out in the hall, Dean bit his lip as he spotted an object behind the base of the toilet, the idea that he didn't know what it was causing him to not want to grab for it, his track record with these things always resulting in Dean bathing in Purell afterward. Snagging a couple of tissues out of the box on the counter, Dean bent down to reach for the black object that seemed to have skidded into a tight corner, the thing easy enough to pick up as soon as he wrapped his fingers around it.

"Check this out," Dean said as he stood up, his eyes glued to the thing as soon it settled into the tissues in his outstretched palm. From what he could see, the thing in question seemed to be an onyx arrowhead, carvings embedded in the side in a language that Dean couldn't read, the sharpened edges of the once-weapon dulled down from age.

Taking it from Dean in its wrapping, Sam eyed the arrowhead before frowning, nothing about it seeming to come to mind and causing Sam to narrow his gaze in confusion. Folding the thing into a small package, Sam placed it in his sweatshirt pocket before stepping back out into the hall, making enough room for Dean to get by as they both stood in the corridor, Dean giving the one bedroom beside them a visual once-over, having already deeming it not worth a search as soon as he noticed that it contained nothing more than a bed and a set of clear plastic drawers that looked better fit for a college dorm. Turning his attention back to the thought of the arrowhead, Dean cleared his throat just as something heavy thudded upstairs, the sound reverberating down through the ceiling as though someone had dropped something substantial, an angry male voice following quickly behind it.

_"Martha, what the hell did I tell you about that radio? You drop it one more time and I'm gonna make sure you don't forget what I said again!"_

"Classy place," Dean commented with a smirk as Sam sighed.

"Yeah, I can see that."

"You wanna get out of here?" Dean asked just as the smell of the victim's apartment vaporized again, causing his stomach to churn. "Maybe get some grub? There's a diner here that apparently serves _the best _burgers in the state and I want to check it out."

Grimacing as Dean started toward the door, Sam furrowed his brows in concern and disgust, Dean turning around for a moment to catch the stare and grinning to himself while Sam spoke, closing off Bryan Jackson's apartment behind him. "How can you even _think_ about food in the middle of Joe's Roach Motel, Dean? Everything about this place makes me not want to eat for a week."

Trying not to laugh at his brother's revulsion, Dean shook his head and dug his hand into the pocket of his jeans as he headed across the lot, retrieving the keys to the truck and popping open the vehicle's door, the repugnance of Bryan Jackson's apartment already erased from his memory and replaced with the thought of biting into a juicy cheeseburger. In the past few weeks that he had been at Bobby's, the man had insisted that the brothers eat normal food for a change, Bobby cooking up tacos and sandwiches as though he had been some kind of master chef before becoming a Hunter. Though Dean had eaten everything that had been given to him without complaint, Bobby's greasy meals better than having to fry something up at a mini-mart, he had been craving hamburgers for the past week. Unfortunately, Sioux Falls had some of the worst fast food places on its side of Texas, leaving Dean with nothing but a promise to himself to head down to one of the better burger joints across the country as soon as he got the chance.

Slipping behind the wheel just as Sam got into the passenger's seat, Dean started the engine and backed out of the stall he had parked the Ranger in, the old truck stammering for a moment before kicking into gear. Recognizing that as one of the many reasons behind his longing to have the Impala up and running before he took another job, Dean shifted into drive and headed for the main road that would take them deeper into town, the thought of food calling his name more alluring than the case at hand.


	5. Four

FOUR

Everglade Residence  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Tuesday, November 21, 2006  
11:57 PM

**P**at Everglade's legs hurt as he walked home from work, the heels and balls of his feet stinging with every step he made toward his house near the outskirts of Pierre, his thighs burning from the heavy lifting he had been doing for hours. It had been a long day, made even longer still by the small remembrance ceremony Manager Dave had held during lunch for Bryan Jackson, Dave attempting to waste their time on niceties over a guy who barely showed up when he was scheduled or did anything while he was there.

Pat had known Bryan about as long as Manager Dave, whose real name was Dave Seeger but got called Manager Dave because he was always managing productivity for the warehouse Pat worked at, and knew both guys well enough to know that Dave was only going through the motions in order to put on a good face for the company, Bryan hardly deserving of anyone saying anything positive about him. In all the years that Pat had seen Bryan slacking off on the job, sitting down instead of carrying freight over to the carts that would divide up the merchandise for the stores requesting it, Pat had never seen one redeeming quality in the guy, always finding him to be irritable, lazy, and sloppy rather than someone who had been eulogized as "a hard worker with strong ethics", as Dave had put it.

Though he knew that these things never meant anything, and that Dave was only doing so because he had been asked to by his superiors, it didn't keep Pat from being agitated at the way Bryan Jackson's true habits were being glossed over and shined up—the one time the man had actually done something worthy of being showcased having been repeated over and over again, the small service seeming to take forever as it stretched its way through Pat's meager half-hour lunch break and into his working shift. While it didn't bother him that he was being asked to stand and listen to Manager Dave drone on about the time Bryan had worked a double shift to cover Tony's sick call, especially since Pat was being paid to essentially do nothing but stare into space, the fact that the man was being idolized bugged Pat more than anything. Bryan Jackson had been a dirty, slovenly man who never took a shower or pride in his job, and the way Manager Dave was painting him made him sound the opposite of that, as though Bryan came in and worked the hardest out of them all.

As the miles passed underneath his feet, Pat couldn't help but think back on that sorry excuse of a speech Dave had given, the man seeming to be putting on a company face as he spoke with delight about Bryan's citizenship and chivalry, and immediately crumbling the moment he was through. To Pat, it seemed as though his boss had been at war with himself over how to go about the situation, choosing to put on a smile as he went on with his speech instead of going through the motions much like Pat would have done had the task fallen on his shoulders. Then again, he didn't seem to be the only one, with a few of the other guys grumbling and smirking whenever Dave brought up a new facet of Bryan's personality that no one around the warehouse had ever seen, especially during the segment about Jackson's "constant cheerfulness that always seemed contagious".

For the most part, Pat liked his job, having worked there for the past ten years and fallen into a rhythm that functioned well for him. Every Monday through Friday, he clocked in at nine and was done by seven, allowing him enough time to walk home before his wife put dinner on the table for him and his two boys. Every now and again, during peak times like holidays or during the summer, Pat would pick up more hours, working until eleven much like he had tonight, his rate of pay doubling from eleven dollars an hour to twenty-two, giving him more money in the bank and more to spend when Christmas eventually came around—and it seemed, with every year that passed, his boys' taste in presents became gradually more expensive.

However, if there was one thing he had to pick about his job that he didn't like, it would be the people he worked with, most of them behaving much like Bryan Jackson had, especially the kids that came in to work their way through college. While he didn't mind the fact that everyone recognized that anyone under twenty-three was basically there because they needed to scrape their funds together in order to make tuition, at the very least they could do their job a little bit better than carrying a few things over from the trucks dropping off equipment, then taking a break every fifteen minutes. Though Pat recognized that this generation was different than his, that kids today had their computers and cell phones doing all the work for them, he at least hoped their parents would have pressed the idea that working hard was doing well into their children's heads, Pat having grown up in an era that's motto was "work until you drop, then work some more". Unfortunately, that slogan seemed to be dying off about as fast as sending letters in the mail.

At fifty-five years old, Patrick Eugene Everglade was the father of two fifteen-year-old twins and the husband of forty-four year old Melissa June, maiden name Webber. Having lived his whole life in Pierre, Pat had come to love the sleepy town that doubled as the state capital, South Dakota always seeming to be running at his pace from the time he woke up to the time he went to bed at night. When he was ten, Pat had joined the Boy Scouts; at fifteen, he had run for student counsel at T.F. Riggs High; and at thirty-five, he had married Melissa. By the time the twins were born, the two had been living in their home out far from the main intersection of the city, with Pat working at the local steel mill from before he had graduated high school until the day it had closed ten years ago. Though he had taken a pay cut as he became employed at his current position, having gained small raises bi-annually, Pat couldn't be happier with his life, the only thing that ever brought him down being the schmucks he had to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

On the whole—while there were some people, especially Dan Rueben and Rob Dover, who worked as though they had expectations to do their job well—most of the other "receiving specialists", as they were all called, seemed to be aware of the fact that there was no one keeping track of them except for Manager Dave, giving them every excuse to take two-hour-long lunches and breaks whenever they pleased. As Pat watched them walk around, picking at the boxes being unloaded from the trucks in an attempt to find out what was inside and nearly damaging the contents with every peck at the cardboard, he couldn't help himself as he became irritated, hoping that there would come a day when Manager Dave decided to clean house and hire people who actually wanted to meet the hourly unloading rate rather than view it as a guideline. Though that seemed to be wishful thinking this late in the game, especially since most of the people who worked there had been doing as they're doing for years, it was the one thing that kept Pat going every time he saw those lazy mooks screwing around rather than helping out in order to make their paychecks worth something.

Taking a deep breath as Pat approached the road leading to his home out by Route 27, the man turned himself away from all thoughts of work, instead focusing on what he would do once inside the warm confines of his house. Melissa and the boys were gone to see Melissa's mother in Arizona, all three of them having a week off due to Thanksgiving, Melissa's job as the high school's office secretary getting put on hold while the place shut down for the holidays. Though they would be back in time for Turkey Day, with enough time to spare in order for Melissa to prepare the ten-person feast she made just for her husband and sons, Pat couldn't help but feel a little excluded in the annual trip out to Phoenix, Pat having always liked Melissa's family and the way they doted on Michael and Matthew as though they were the most interesting kids in the world.

However, with the place to himself, that also gave Pat time to relax and unwind in a way that he was never able to with a house full of people always being there whenever he walked through the door. On most nights, Melissa had already laid out dinner, with the twins' homework sitting on the counter to be checked as soon as they were done, and both boys full of stories that they wanted to share about their adventures at school during the day. Most of the time, while they ate, Michael always talked about some nerd in his class who sat next to him, the kid always raising his hand and making a spectacle of himself as he tried to show off to a teacher who ate up everything that poured out of the kid's mouth, whereas Matthew always remained quiet, Pat's son having not opened his mouth since he turned fourteen and decided that talking was too mainstream for him and his goth pals. While Pat knew it was just a phase, it was an irritating one, one that blocked Pat out of his son's life whether Matt realized it or not.

Tonight, though, Pat was going to have to fend for himself when it came to dinner options, Melissa having made numerous plates up for him to stick in the microwave before leaving, but none of them seeming as appealing as ordering a pizza and knocking back a couple of beers. For the next few days, Pat would be off work, the warehouse shutting down for the days surrounding Thanksgiving in order for inventory to clear out for Black Friday. During his last week of shifts, Pat and the few others who had agreed to overtime had been working tirelessly to empty trucks and sort them for the various stores around South Dakota, the loads being larger than normal in anticipation for the biggest shopping day of the year. Though Pat didn't know how much any of the things he unloaded cost, he knew that there were bound to be a ton of people getting good deals come the day after Thanksgiving, a few crates full of new laptops coming off and getting sorted for the electronic stores that were more than likely going to price them at bottom dollar for whoever braved the cold in order to purchase them. Though Pat had only done Black Friday once with his wife, he knew from that one time that the prices were low and the crowds were high—snow, rain, fog, or shine.

Reaching into his pocket to grab the keys to his front door, Pat's hands shook a little in the late-night chill that was spreading over Pierre, the temperature probably lower out in the boonies by his house due to all the empty space. As he neared the porch on his 1973 A-frame house, Pat could see that the light illuminating the steps was the only one for miles, his home sitting abandoned on a dirt road and surrounded by flatlands as far as the eye could see. At first, when he and Melissa had moved in, the two of them had been scared of break-ins and wolves, but having lived there for so long without incident, both of them were now confident enough to know that they were alright out there by themselves.

Tugging at the keyring that would allow him inside, Pat attempted to juxtapose himself into coaxing the embedded metal out of his deep pocket, the small little arrowhead he had found at work falling out and plopping down on the mat instead. Bending down to pick it up as soon as he had opened the door, Pat turned the thing over and over again in his hands while he made his way into the living room, shutting himself off from the cold outside and placing his jacket on the hook near the entrance as he went. The inside of the house was warm, the heater having kicked on sometime during his walk home, and the heat felt good against his tingling skin. As he walked into the kitchen to glance at the clock and grab the phone off the wall, Pat paused at the fridge while he kept the arrowhead pressed tightly in his palm by his thumb. Opening the door and slipping a beer out from its plastic holder, Pat headed for the cabinet housing the local yellow pages, the phone book so thin it could hardly be considered more than a pamphlet. Finding it in the third drawer down underneath a rack full of fancy dishes, Pat placed it on the counter and flipped through it, quickly finding the number of his favorite pizza place, one that delivered and stayed open until 3AM.

However, before he could turn for the phone, the skin on the back of Pat's neck began to prickle as an odd silence filled the house, the sense of something like a dark cloud taking over the room causing him to stand still. Looking around with wide eyes, Pat attempted to find the source of the uneasiness, seeing nothing in the kitchen and keeping him too scared to go and check the living room. Holding his breath in an attempt to listen to the silence better, Pat kept the fingers of each hand pressed against both the arrowhead and the side of the beer can, the condensation of the latter dripping onto his digits and causing Pat to jump unexpectedly.

After what felt like an hour of waiting, Pat finally got up the courage to inspect the rest of the house, every room coming up clean before he returned to the kitchen to make his phone call. Grabbing the cordless handset off of the cradle tacked to the wall, Pat dialed the number to Pizza Pete's, a sleepy voice on the other end of the line answering and asking what he wanted to order with a reminder of the specials in a low, tired voice. Going through the motions of ordering his usual, Pat went over the same conversation as he did every time, having to list his address, phone number, toppings specifications, and payment type to the girl writing it down, the one he was talking to obviously new judging by the way she took so long to finalize the information he was giving her.

Unfortunately, half-way through his order, the sense of a heavy cloud hovering over his house came again, one that seemed denser than the first time.

Turning the arrowhead nervously over in his hand, Pat pivoted to rest his behind against the counter while the girl on the phone repeated back to him that he wanted a Hawaiian pizza with bacon, ranch dressing on the side, and an order of breadsticks, Pat nodding as though she could see him on the other end. Ultimately, though, before she could ask if there was anything else he wanted to add, something had distracted Pat into dropping the phone, the girl's tinny voice reaching up to him while Pat's eyes took in the sight of a man dressed in all black standing before him, a smirk plastered on his face while his hands reached up to show that a small silver device that looked both menacing and covered in dried blood was gripped in his fingers. In truth, the tool looked like a small ice cream scooper with a handle carved like a metal stake and brass knuckles welded to the top, the thing seeming immediately more threatening as the man behind it angled it toward Pat's face.

Within seconds, fear rooted Pat to the spot as it flooded him, the man seeming to have some sort of force over him as he came nearer and Pat stayed in place. Keeping his mouth twisted in that same snicker, the stranger anchored Pat's chin in place with a strong grip while the gadget in his hand made its way up toward his eyeball, Pat automatically bending away from it when it came too close, the instinct to run replacing the one cementing him to the linoleum underneath him.

Attempting to squirm his way out from the man's grasp, Pat struggled against the stranger's firm hold, finding that fighting against him was useless. As the man pushed him up into the counter Pat had been leaning up against, the siding dug into his back as he tried to escape the silver scooper heading toward him, the female voice on the phone echoing up to him from the floor right before screams of pain filled the kitchen.

_"Mr. Everglade? You still there?"_


	6. Five

FIVE

Hughes County Sheriff Station  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Wednesday, November 22, 2006  
8:12 AM

**S**itting with his back resting against the worn headboard of his bed, Sam stared straight forward at the television sitting on top of an aged dresser, the horizontal hold of the set causing the picture to bounce every now and again, but the sound cutting through the room just fine. Another attack had happened the night before. The local news station was all over it, giving updates on the developing details every few minutes as though this was the first time anything like this had ever happened in town.

_"According to police, Patrick Everglade's body was found with his eyes removed, investigators assuming it to not be a surgical matter," _the blonde female anchor read, her eyes hungrily searching the teleprompter feeding her information for more than what she was getting, a helicopter-shot video of the victim's house being shown in a small corner of the screen—an A-frame with not much around it aside from empty plains of dirt and spurge, cop cars circling the front."_Authorities are asking for anyone with any information to come forward at this time. Anonymous tips are also welcome."_

Pursing his lips beside Sam was Dean, a look of contempt on his face as he glared at the television's bounding screen, the fact that they were on a now-obvious hunt seeming to disappoint him in a way that caused him to narrow his eyes at the set. For most of the night the evening before, Dean had been attempting to convince his brother that what they were looking into was nothing more than just some crazy, Ed Gein-style murder, Dean citing their search of Bryan Jackson's apartment and the non-results it wielded as proof. Though Sam was clearly under the opposite impression, that what they were working was an authentic case, he had let his brother continue to try to convince him otherwise, figuring it would give Dean something to do while Sam searched through some of the books he had stolen from Bobby's before they had left the man's house.

While Dean was right that their scouring of the victim in question's apartment had left them with nothing more than _nothing_ in terms of information, they had managed to find something that might lead them out of square one—the arrowhead that Dean had discovered on the bathroom floor. For the majority of the day following their search, Sam had been looking high and low for anything that would tell him what the thing meant, only to run across a snippet inside the heaviest of Bobby's volumes that told Sam the etchings on the side of the arrowhead were a form of Ancient Greek. Though that didn't lead to much, it lead to something more than a steaming pile of zip, and that had been enough to convince Sam that the case Ellen had passed along to them had been legitimate.

Before going to bed the night before, Dean falling asleep around midnight after talking himself to exhaustion, Sam had made sure that the arrowhead was safely tucked into his jacket pocket, something in the back of his mind telling him to put it someplace he would remember in case he lost it. As soon as he had woken up in the morning, Sam had grabbed it from where it was stashed, placing it on the bedside table and checking to make sure it was there every few seconds as he listened to the news, instinct telling him that the object was related to the murder somehow. Though he knew his brother was occasionally shooting him a look that told him his behavior was strange, Sam didn't much care, the arrowhead having an effect on him that he couldn't quite describe, one that caused him to feel as though letting it out of his sight would mean that it would disappear on its own.

The moment the morning news report was over, Sam reached behind him to grab the remote that had slipped under his pillow and turned off the television, the set making a loud pop as its screen turned to black. Ignoring the sound as Dean got up from his own bed, Sam watched as his brother headed for the coffee pot across the room, Dean going through the motions of making his daily brew as silence filled the space between them. Lately, ever since Dad, Dean had become a type of quiet that didn't fit him, as though he was holding everything inside whereas, his entire life, Dean had vocalized every concern or thought he had ever had. Though it bothered Sam that his brother was changing his per usual and keeping his mouth shut rather than opening it to make a remark every few minutes, there wasn't much he could do about it, the last time he had brought it up ending just as badly as whenever Sam brought anything up relating to their father and his death.

As the coffee pot sputtered and stirred across the room, Sam let the noise cut through the stillness, his own lips remaining clamped together as he chewed the inside of his cheek and watched his brother lean against the cabinet, his eyes taking to staring at the blank wall behind the bed. Ever since Dad's passing, this was something else Dean had suddenly begun doing, something that concerned Sam. For the past twenty-seven years that Dean had been alive, never once had he been the type to sit and stare. Being still and silent wasn't something Dean was particularly fond of, especially something that required his mind to think more than it had to, stillness always seeming to provoke reflection in some way. Dean, who was always doing something to keep his hands busy or watching TV to keep his thoughts away from the job, had always been the last to be described as the strong, silent type. Now, however, that description seemed to fit him, which was both unsettling at the same time as it was working to convince Sam that something was wrong with his brother.

"So, what do you think we should do?" Dean asked, snapping himself out of his reverie to look over at Sam, Dean's hair mussed from sleep and eyes bleary from lack of caffeine. "Head down to the PD and see what they know? Or do you think we should head straight for this guy's house to see what's what?"

"I'm thinking we should hit up the police first this time, see what they know or what they got from both victims' places before we go tearing into this Everglade guy's house," Sam frowned, not really sure how they were going to convince the cops that they were some sort of federal agents in street clothes, their suits and other "costumes", as Dean called them, left behind in Sioux Falls.

"Alright," Dean nodded, turning around as the coffee pot finished making enough for a cup, the sound of pouring coming a moment later as Dean became quiet again, leaving Sam to his own thoughts as he tried to figure out the best way to go about getting information out of the local force.

More often than not, pretending to be reporters wielded some results, but not ever enough to get them moving on a case. Though Pierre was a small town, it also happened to be the capital of South Dakota, meaning that it was possible the authorities around here stuck to the letter of the law and weren't likely to give out information to someone who claimed to work for the nearby newspaper. In all the big cities that Sam and Dean hit up, which weren't many considering they preferred to avoid large metropolises, both brothers had noticed that the people who lived and worked in major areas tended to be more paranoid about who they gave details to, always asking to see IDs and attempting to verify them before going forth. While Pierre had a startling small population for a state capital, it was still sizable enough to be considered cautious.

Taking a deep breath, Sam kicked back the covers resting on top of his feet and stood up, his brain still attempting to come up with a feasible cover while he watched Dean sip at his coffee and gaze out the window, the gray sky overhead looking as though it was threatening rain or snow. Knowing that he didn't want to be caught outside should the weather go south, Sam grabbed a towel off of the sink beside the door to the shower, wanting to get out of their motel and done with their conversation with the police before it started to storm, being caught in a downpour in the middle of a case having never been something Sam was especially fond of.

However, before he could head into the bathroom, the sight of Dean hurriedly crossing the room from where he had been standing beside the door caught Sam's attention, causing him to watch his brother as Dean reached for something on the nightstand between their two beds. Taking a couple of steps toward Dean as he pawed almost blindly at the wooden end table, knocking his cell phone onto the floor, Sam opened his mouth to speak, almost certain that his brother had lost his mind in the moments since he had woken up. Unfortunately, before he could ask, Dean cut him off, his brother turning around with a look of amusement and annoyance marring his face, his words slow and measured as he spoke.

"Hey, Sammy, you know that arrowhead you were eying all morning? It's gone."

* * *

Sam was having a hard time wrapping the idea around in his head that the object he had suspected would disappear actually had. It was as though he had been suspicious of the thing, an object that was so small that it was barely bigger than his thumb, yet seemed to contain an aura that had caused Sam to be apprehensive. Still, it was gone. Dean and Sam had searched the entire motel room before taking off just to make sure.

On the drive further into town, Dean pointing the Ranger toward the local police precinct, Sam had milled over the reasons behind the arrowhead vanishing from sight, only to come up with nothing that seemed plausible. At first, he had assumed that it had just simply evaporated, though that appeared weak in terms of an explanation. Not much, if anything, would dissolve because it wanted to. There had to be some sort of cause as to why. However, whatever that reason was seemed to be evading Sam, his thoughts switching in and out of narrowing down where the arrowhead had gone to and coming up with a cover that would get them past the velvet ropes and into the police station.

Though the trip from where they were staying at the Pierre Pine Inn to the Hughes County precinct was only a short ten minutes, it had been enough to give Sam time to think. On the side of the road, he had found inspiration that lead to their convincing aliases, a sign that pointed to a disguise the brothers had used before but had forgotten about. Filling Dean in as he pulled into the paved parking lot outside of the station, Sam watched as his brother rolled his eyes and frowned, the idea that they were going to have to dig deep to pull this one off placing an annoyed look on his face.

"That is the dumbest friggen thing I've ever heard," Dean scoffed, shutting off the engine and leaning back in his seat. "There is no way in hell the cops are going to buy that."

"Come on, Dean," Sam sighed. "We have to at least try it. How else are we going to get information on this job? You wanna sneak in here late at night and risk getting caught? Risk getting arrested? How are we supposed to hunt from inside a jail cell?"

Groaning and shaking his head, Dean popped the door open and hopped out, shoving the keys to the truck into the pocket of his brown-and-pewter leather coat. "Fine. But I get to pick the names. Every time you get the chance, you pick something stupid and obvious."

Shrugging, Sam leaned forward to pop open the glove box, the small cigar box they used to hold their fake IDs sitting inside, having been shoved there since their last case in Wisconsin. Grabbing the ones they needed, Sam slid out of the Ranger and followed his brother toward the front doors of the station, handing off one of the false credentials to Dean as they walked. Pulling open the glass that separated the warm precinct from the cold outside—the wind blowing briskly in a way that made the frigid day feel even more wintry than before, the clouds overhead churning in a way that promised a downpour—Sam let his brother lead the way toward the desk taking up most of the small front room of the station, a labyrinth of officer-filled cubicles behind it, doors leading elsewhere further back.

Sitting with her head bowed toward something resting against the desk beneath her was a blonde woman, her flaxen hair covering her face in a curtain as it brushed against the pages contained within a manila folder, the words she was reading obviously interesting enough to keep her from tearing her attention away as Dean approached her. Clearing his throat several times over the loud sound of ringing phones, Dean turned to look at his brother as they waited for her to look up, the woman finally doing so after a long minute, a look of contempt on her face at having been interrupted.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes," Dean said, reaching into his pocket to retrieve the ID Sam had given him only moments before, "I'm Michael Wilton and this is my partner, Randy Gane. We're from the National Park and Wildlife Service, here to talk to the sheriff about the murders of Bryan Jackson and Pat Everglade. Is he in?"

Frowning up at him and knitting her brows, the blonde's eyes switched suspiciously between Sam and Dean. "Those murders aren't being considered animal attacks. Why would the NPWS be interested in them?"

Straightening up, Sam watched as his brother turned on the charm, Dean leaning against the desk and smiling in a way Sam only saw whenever his brother was attempting to manipulate someone into doing something for them, his voice slowed and lowered just above a whisper, as though what the two were discussing was a secret between them. "Well, to be quite honest with you, Pat Everglade lives kind of far from town, out in a place where there aren't many houses around. It's actually highly likely that something got into his house and attacked him. We've seen it before, it happens. It's unfortunate, but that's the risk of living that far out. If we could just talk to the sheriff, we could stop this from happening again, to someone else who might be living alone out there."

Nodding as though hypnotized by what Dean had said, the blonde reached for the phone sitting on the corner of her desk, practiced fingers dialing a number that rang once before it picked up. "Hey, Mike, there are a couple of guys from the Wildlife Service out here to see you. Are you busy? Alright. I'll let them know." Hanging up the phone, the blonde pushed her hair behind her ear as she looked up at Dean, the magic he seemed to have worked on her keeping her interested in him. "Sheriff Escobar's office is in the right corner."

"Thank you," Dean grinned, bowing his head in appreciation.

Turning toward Sam as he let out a silent sigh of relief, Dean beckoned toward the frosted glass door positioned in the northeastern corner of the room, moving aside to let Sam go ahead of him. "Lead the way, Randy."


	7. Six

SIX

Hughes County Sheriff Station  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Wednesday, November 22, 2006  
10:47 AM

**S**heriff Michael Escobar was a large man with a large gut, one that spilled over his belt and down the front of the khaki pants he wore. His skin was tan and permeated with acne scars, a mustache and beard covering the bottom part of his face in a way Dean was sure was against regulation, whereas the rest of him looked as though the sheriff was the Michelin Man's lumpier older brother.

As Sam and Dean entered the guy's office, taking a seat without being offered one, Dean had immediately taken to eyeing Escobar and his workspace, noticing automatically that the room seemed too small to contain such a rotund man. As the sheriff squeezed his way between the wall and the desk that separated them, sitting in a chair that squealed in protest under his weight, Dean couldn't help but wonder how someone so bulky had managed to become sheriff, especially given the fact that, if he needed to, it looked as though he wouldn't be able to fit behind the wheel of a cop car.

It had taken the brothers no time at all to gain entrance into Escobar's office, the door swinging open to them as soon as Dean had knocked, the sheriff looking flustered at being disturbed, as well as annoyed at having to talk to them. The moment they had introduced themselves, the irritated expression had been chocked up to one of sheer aggravation, the man rolling his eyes and cutting Dean off half-way through filling him in on what they were doing there and who they had come to discuss. Turning around and hobbling his way back inside, the sheriff had left Dean to shut the door behind him as the boorish officer placed himself back behind the cheap cedar that doubled as his work terminal, an old laptop computer taking up some of the desk whereas the rest of it was covered with file folders on multiple cases.

Dean was used to rude and disheveled cops. In all the hunts he had had, only a handful of times had any of the police he worked with actually been competent and helpful, the rest of them seeming either cocky or disorganized as a whole. Though Dean was sure his exasperation with officers of the law stemmed from his father's hatred of them, Dad always claiming that everyone on the other side of the caution tape at crime scenes was only doing more to mess up the evidence than to help clear up the confusion behind a case, he still understood why the man would be so ambivalent when it came to working with them, always choosing to go around the red tape rather than through.

Before Sam had come along, before what had happened with Jessica and the fire, Dean had been following Dad's example when it came to discovering information, always using late-night hours and lock picks to dig through the details. Now that his brother was here, finding out what they needed to know seemed simpler—though however much of that was due in part to Sam's ability to lie like a dog and use his puppy-eyed glare on whoever was trying to put the brakes on their investigation, Dean was uncertain. Still, even with Sam's ridiculous costumes and persistence that they look the part rather than singularly flash fake IDs to get them past the velvet ropes, it seemed as though their ticket to intel appeared to take less time, with no waiting for dark to come or offices to close in order to get the ball rolling. Instead, they went straight to the source, whatever acting classes Sam had taken at Stanford—"I had to sell it, didn't I? It's method acting," Sam had once said after a fake fight between them inside of a bar in an attempt to gain information from an off-duty cop, giving Dean the idea that his brother had taken more than his fair share of pansy classes while away, the other one being an art lesson that had been put to particularly good use at a gallery in New York—paying off and slipping them through the system with ease.

"So, you're here to talk about the serial killer case," Escobar said suddenly, snapping Dean out of his thoughts and causing him to turn his attention to the oversized sheriff.

"Serial killer?" Dean frowned, glancing at his brother for a second. "What makes y—"

"A bit obvious, isn't it?" Escobar interrupted, his gruff voice sounding as though he had smoked seventy cigarettes in the past hour, as well as a million more in his entire lifetime. "One guy's tongue goes missing, then another guy's eyeballs. Sounds to me like we've got some nut job out there that's collecting parts. Even leaves us a calling card."

"Calling ca—" Sam began, his mouth snapping shut at the sheriff's glare.

"You boys don't read the local newspaper, do you? If you did, you'd know everything I'm telling you. And if you did, you wouldn't be here. Ain't no animal attack in that house, boys. There's no need for no park rangers to be out here asking questions," Escobar said, rolling his eyes for the second time since allowing the brothers into his office. "Unless you two are tryna tell me that you know of some animal that leaves sulfur behind."

Eyes widening, Dean's gaze immediately locked on Sam's, a knowing expression apparently crossing both of their faces and causing Escobar to raise his thick, gray-tinted brows at them. All of a sudden, Dean was more interested in this case than he had been the moment Sam had told him about it, having wanted to pass it off as soon as it had been said that Ellen had been the one to find it. Now that sulfur had been discovered, that piqued Dean's interest, causing him to become hungry for information, which seemed to be a sensation that Sam shared as he switched his stare from where his eyes met Dean's and back onto the sheriff's.

"Sulfur?" Sam asked. "Where did you find sulfur?"

"Different places for each victim," Escobar shrugged. "First time it was the air conditioning vent in the bathroom, the second time it was the kitchen windowsill. We took all of it over to the local chemistry lab for samples and testing. Won't hear back from them for a couple of days, they're so backed up. Still, no wild bears or nothing that would interest you."

"Well, what about anything else?" Sam asked, biting his lip. "No one saw or heard anything? Nothing else weird was found? No strange objects?"

Pursing his lips in discomfort at Sam's persistent questions, the sheriff shifted his weight against the squealing chair, his eyes locked on the wall behind the brothers as he debated what should be said or left confidential. "No. Well, there was a girl at the local pizza place that heard everything over the phone, but we already interviewed her. All she heard was a scream and the receiver drop. It went dead a second later. Nothing else _weird_, though."

Knitting his brows in thought, Sam tapped his fingers against his knees as he searched his brain for questions, Dean taking the silence as an opportunity to continue looking around Escobar's office. For the most part, the space was bare, no personal photos covering the desk, nor any on the walls. Aside from the plaque above a short bookcase distinguishing the man as an officer who had been behind the badge for fifteen years, there wasn't much of anything that told anyone whose office this was, the few books on the shelf being nothing more than law manuals and a binder reading _2005-2006 Reports_.

Rolling his shoulders back as Sam got ready to stand, obviously running out of questions, Dean followed his brother's lead as he thanked Escobar and headed out past the lobby and toward the parking lot, a small drizzle greeting them as they climbed into the truck that was now spotted with raindrops.

"So, demons," Dean said as quiet filled the cab. "You think it's The Demon?"

Shaking his head slowly at first, then faster, Sam sighed. "No, I don't think so."

Opening his mouth to speak, then snapping it shut, Dean bit his lip, allowing a stillness to fill the vehicle as both brothers sat in thought. For some reason, Dean had a feeling Sam was right in thinking whatever evil was in town wasn't _their_ evil, but rather something that was equally destructive killing people for kicks. With most demons, there wasn't a master plan or ulterior motive, just random chaos, just like that one that had been taking down planes in Pennsylvania. However, like with all supernatural creatures, there was a method to their madness, a pattern that became obvious once it was spotted. Unfortunately, with this demon, whatever it was doing still appeared to be random, the thing sneaking into two different places and taking two different body parts. On top of that, there was still the unanswered question of what the arrowhead Sam had found meant, and why it had disappeared on its own, the officers investigating the place seeming to have missed it from where it had been hiding in the bathroom the first time, another one, or maybe the same one, probably lying in wait somewhere else at the second victim's house, hoping not to be discovered.

Reaching forward to stick the keys into the ignition, Dean started the engine and listened to the truck's whining sputter as it started, letting the sound take him elsewhere. Now that they were hot on something's trail, Dean wished more than ever that the Impala was up and running, working a job without being behind the wheel of his baby feeling wrong. Though the stolen Ranger was better than the soccer mom vehicle Bobby had last given them, it still didn't compare to the sleekness of the Impala and the way she handled, the car like another weapon in the arsenal that helped them put monsters permanently down for the count.

Pulling out of the stall he had been parked in, Dean edged the truck toward the highway that would take them east, something in his gut telling him it was the right way to go. Looking over at his brother as a couple of cars passed in front of them, stopping them from heading out of the parking lot, Dean could see that Sam was already a step ahead of what he was going to ask, the address to the Everglade house prominently displayed on the screen of his brother's cell phone, Sam holding it at an angle to allow Dean to see it more clearly. Memorizing the location of the place, Dean nodded before Sam stowed his mobile back inside his sweatshirt pocket, the rain picking up as Dean pointed them toward Bridgeford Drive, a road he remember seeing on their way into town.

Of all the things that Dean enjoyed about having his brother back on the hunt with him, it was the intuitive nature between them that Dean liked best. Without having to ask or say much of anything, Sam seemed to already know what his older brother wanted, as well as Dean seeming to understand the same for Sam. Having been trained by their father, and having grown up knowing nothing more than to watch out for each other and be partners in everything they ever did, neither of them ever having any friends to interrupt their brotherly flow, it seemed as though knowing what the other wanted or needed was almost second nature. Though Dad was now gone, and though that instinct between them seemed to be working against him lately, Dean was glad that they still held strong to it, despite the fact that Sam seemed to be using it to his advantage whenever he wanted to know if something was wrong with his older brother and the way that he was dealing with their father's death.

Turning onto the rural highway that would take them down to Pat Everglade's place, Dean let the road noise fill the car as Sam stared out the window, the thought of turning the radio on seeming to be one that was forgotten lately, all the thoughts stirred up by the songs Dean had heard a thousand times being those that were unwelcome. In truth, Dean wasn't dealing with his father's passing all that well, the intrusive whispers of Dad's last words echoing in his head every now and again whenever Dean let his mind go astray. With all his might, Dean tried to keep from dwelling on them, to keep from letting them change his perception of his little brother, but whenever he caught himself staring, they flooded him like a dam that had sprung a leak, eventually flooding him sometime in the night and interrupting his dreams—much like Jessica had flooded Sam's dreams in the months following her death.

Though Dean knew that losses took time to heal, especially those as large as the one he had experienced, and that there were stages of grief—Sam filling him in on that on a day Dean had felt particularly like kicking his brother's ass, the younger Winchester deciding to become a temporary psychologist and use terms like "symptomatology" and "somatic distress" as a way to explain Dean's mindset—he also knew that he had his way of dealing with things whereas Sam had his. No matter how in sync their hunting style, they were still two different people, and even though Sam wanted Dean to discuss what he was feeling, and maybe even cry, he couldn't, and it wasn't for the reason Dean knew his brother was assuming—that he was putting on a brave face and ignoring what had happened. Sam couldn't know what their father had told his eldest son, and that was all there was to it.

Letting out a deep breath as the house he recognized from the morning news appeared down the lane, Dean chanced a glance at Sam as his brother took a moment to put his staring out at the passing blurs of brown and gray on pause to pull out his phone, some kind of idea obviously suddenly striking him as he scrolled his way through what Dean could see to be his contact list. Stopping on a name Dean couldn't read, the tiny font making it hard, Sam bit his lip before turning off the small screen, the phone going back where it had come from the moment Dean approached the red A-frame sitting out in the middle of nothing, the nearest neighbor two miles down the road and barely a speck in the distance.

Pulling the truck into the gravel driveway, Dean looked out at the front yard of the place before getting out of the vehicle, rain hitting him in sprinkles as he took in the collection of garden gnomes sitting underneath a window leading inside. Heading for the front door, and seeing that it was taped shut, Dean pulled out the switchblade placed in the breast pocket of his leather coat, immediately springing the knife to life and slitting the warning label that informed them that entering the house was a criminal offense that _can_ and _will_ be persecuted by law. Standing in the entry way, Sam shouldered in behind his older brother and shut the door behind them, both of their eyes wandering the living room in search of a place to start.

Settling on one half of the foyer while Sam took the other, Dean split apart from his brother as the two set to work, both of them hoping that their investigation of Pat Everglade's home would be more fruitful than their search Bryan Jackson's apartment.


	8. Seven

SEVEN

Hughes County Library  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Wednesday, November 22, 2006  
3:16 PM

**S**am turned the newly-discovered second arrowhead over and over in his hand, his mind lost in thought as he stared blankly at the computer screen in front of him, not seeing anything that the monitor displayed but instead a blur of white and blue.

For the past hour, Sam had been stationed alone at one of the Hughes County Library's numerous PCs, the one he had chosen in the back affording him privacy and silence—the front end of the library filled with the sound of teenagers gabbing between one another and cell phones beeping every now and again as students from the local high school pretended to study and finish whatever homework they had been assigned to complete over Thanksgiving break. Sam had seen them upon entering the small, brick-front building, all of them ignoring him as the kids talked amongst themselves, sometimes cackling loudly at a joke that he was sure would be funny if he was fifteen years old. Passing them quickly and with purpose, Sam had taken a seat at the computer the farthest from anyone, immediately setting to work on discovering the meaning behind the object in his hand.

While Sam and Dean had been inside of Pat Everglade's home, the two brothers had torn the place apart looking for the arrowhead that had been discovered under the refrigerator, both of them leaving the house as it was when they left, too preoccupied by their own thoughts to care that they had abandoned it as a mess that they had created. On the drive back toward their motel, the trip had been silent, Sam examining the markings on the face of the object and noticing at once that the symbols weren't the same as the first, these seeming to be a completely different set of six Greek letters as opposed to the four that had been engraved in the previous arrowhead. However, when it came to figuring out what they said or what it meant, Sam was at a loss, his curiosity causing him to want to find out as soon as possible in order to connect the dots on the case.

Grabbing the notepad he had used to scribble down the etchings the first time, Sam had taken the keys to the truck and left Dean behind at the motel, his brother complaining that he wanted more than anything to keep from stepping foot inside of yet another library. Going at it solo, Sam had taken a minute inside the vehicle while the rain started to batter down on the hood of the car to trace the second set of symbols, holding on tight to the arrowhead in case this one went missing again like the one before it. When he was done, he had made his way toward the tiny building he and Dean had passed on their way toward the sheriff's station, the mud of the unpaved roads splashing beneath the Ranger's tires and leaving behind tracks that were quickly filled with welling water.

Unfortunately, during the hour that he had been searching vigorously online for information, digging through every site he knew to be reliable as well as trying some that seemed less than, Sam had discovered nothing that would help him, even the translation website coming up with nothing when Sam attempted to transcribe the sigils from their archaic language into some form of English. Though he was far from giving up, Sam's curiosity turning into raw persistence, he needed something that would give him inspiration as to where to look, Sam under the impression that he had yet to leave every stone unturned.

As he stared off into the distance, letting his mind debate between switching from his web resources to the daunting task of searching through books, Sam also wondered whether or not he should call Bobby, his fingers having previously guided his phone toward the man's name in his contact list on the way to Pat Everglade's house. Though Sam knew his friend would probably be able to dig up more in a minute than Sam could in a day, he was hesitant. For the past month, the brothers had been doing nothing but staying at Bobby's house, eating his food, and drinking his beer. Bugging him while Sam knew he was on another job would only add to the intrusion the Winchesters had already placed on him.

Deciding to return to the monitor glaring brightly in front of him, Sam switched his gaze to the white of the blank browser page, his eyes immediately falling on the address bar and the cursor blinking within it. It seemed as though that little flashing line was mocking him, as if taunting him and the fact that he was having a hard time coming up with anything that would prove to be a useful search. As he popped his knuckles and tapped his fingers absently against the keys, Sam stared at the flickering I that seemed to be teasing him, occasionally typing "www" just to get rid of it.

Figuring that his best option would be to conduct another Google scouring, the last one going just as fruitless as everything else appeared to be, Sam typed in a few keywords, hoping that "body part", "removal", "demon", and "Ancient Greek" would turn up more than before. Watching as the page loaded, Sam read the information underneath each, finding that most of them related to the Ancient Egyptian practice of removing the pharaoh's intestines after death in order to make the path into the afterlife easier. Though that was close, though maybe a few thousand miles off, it wasn't what he was looking for. Trying again, Sam let his eyes wander the page before giving up, his fingers guiding the mouse over to the X in the corner and closing the browser window with a click.

Frustrated, Sam ran his hands over his face and through his hair, not caring that the brown mop that had recently started falling into his eyes now looked like a disheveled mess, mirroring the way the case was going. So far, based on what the sheriff said about finding sulfur at the scene, all the brothers knew was that a demon was involved and that it had something to do with a set of old arrowheads that seemed to disappear once discovered. However, what all those things added up to, and what they all meant, was still a mystery, and if Sam didn't get the ball rolling fast, they would have another attack on their hands before they knew it, one that both brothers would blame themselves for for not solving the case quicker.

Sighing loudly, Sam slipped down in his chair and shoved his hand into his sweatshirt pocket, his fingertips finding his cell phone quickly and pulling it out. Though he knew that calling Bobby would further add to the burden Sam and Dean had become on the man, Sam also knew that he couldn't risk someone's life just for the sake of a speck of kindness. Bobby would understand if the younger Winchester bothered him for help on a job despite being in the middle of one of his own.

Scrolling through his contacts, Sam hit the call button once it landed on his friend's name, listening to it ring a few times before the man picked up, his scruffy voice sounding tired and worn out, almost as though he had spent the entire night entangled with a gang of vampires that just wouldn't die.

"Sam," Bobby answered, a nod undoubtingly coming with the greeting.

"Hey, Bobby," Sam sighed again, biting his lip in uncertainty, the tone of his friend's voice and as exhausted as it sounded causing him to pause. "So, uh, Dean and I are working a cause a few hours out and we've kind of run into a problem that we're hoping you might be able to help with. Are you busy?"

"Not at the moment," Bobby replied. "What is it?"

Taking a few minutes to repeat back the details of the case—from the missing tongue and eyes, to the disappearing arrowhead, to the presence of sulfur—Sam talked Bobby through what was going on in Pierre, the man occasionally asking for clarification on some things but otherwise allowing Sam to tell the story in full. By the time he finished, Bobby had become quiet, a thoughtful silence filling the line as the older man soaked in what Sam had said, the squeak of an old wooden chair echoing in the background as Bobby shifted his weight or changed sitting positions.

"You think you can send me a picture of those markings?" Bobby asked after a long moment, the pensiveness in his voice still there, the fatigue now gone and replaced with swelling curiosity.

"Yeah, yeah. Sure," Sam said, a smile touching his lips at the idea of getting help.

"Alright. E-mail them to me and I'll see what I can do. And, Sam?" Bobby said, the line going silent again before something heavy began to linger in the air, a density that hovered between the two men sitting miles apart that made them seem as though they were in the same room. Sam recognized this feeling. He had experienced it many times since showing up on Bobby's doorstep after Dad's death. He knew what was coming, a question he couldn't answer truthfully, despite the fact that he never wanted to lie to the man who had been like a second father to the brothers. "How are you and Dean holding up? You boys okay?"

"We're fine," Sam fibbed. "Just working."

"M-hmm," Bobby grumbled, clucking his tongue in disbelief.

Grimacing sheepishly even though he knew his friend couldn't see him, Sam let the conversation die before Bobby picked it up again, only promising to call if he found anything before hanging up, Sam shoving his phone back into his pocket before turning back toward the computer. Though he knew that calling Bobby was a big step toward helping the case along, and that he was tired of staring at an overly-bright monitor all day, Sam couldn't tear himself away from the library just yet, something at the back of his head telling him that he would find something if he just kept looking. Stopping just to take a picture of the arrowhead and the symbols he had written down with his phone, and leaving it out on the desk rather than stuffing it into his pocket for the hundredth time, Sam sent the photo off to his friend before placing his fingers back on the keys, opening another browser window and trying yet another Google search with different words that might help narrow down the investigation.

As the page refreshed with links waiting to be opened, Sam clicked each of them, splaying them out in separate tabs, before digging into the first one, finding that it was a basic website detailing the change of the Grecian dialect through the years. Though he didn't know what century he was looking for, Sam had a feeling learning at least something about the language would help him when it came to discovering what the letters on the arrowhead meant, which might prove more useful later on.

However, before he could get far down the page, the ringing of his cell tore his attention away, the name displayed on the caller ID telling Sam that his brother was bored of sitting in the motel alone—either that, or hungry and calling to request food.

"Yeah?" Sam answered, continuing reading as Dean spoke.

"Hey, you almost done at the Hall of Learning?" Dean asked, the sound of the television in the background telling Sam that his brother had given up on reading Dad's journal in terms of research either hours ago or before Sam had even left. "I had an idea about this whole missing body parts thing. You remember that creature Dad hunted back in ninety-five, the gnarl?"

Frowning, Sam nodded. "That thing that paralyzed people and ate their skin? Yeah."

"Well, what if we have something like that going on here? Maybe we have a demon on our hands that's eating people's body parts for dinner. Wouldn't be the weirdest thing we've ever hunted."

Stopping a moment to tap his fingers against the tabletop, Sam bit his lip in thought before responding. "Yeah, maybe."

"You don't sound too convinced," Dean said, sounding disappointed.

"I know," Sam frowned. "Listen, I'm almost done here. I already called Bobby to see what he could do with this, so maybe he'll have something. You want me to grab dinner on the way back?"

"You called Bobby? Thank God. At least you didn't call that Ellen woman again."

Grimacing to himself, Sam let out a deep breath, suddenly feeling guilty at temporarily forgetting about Ellen. Maybe he should have called her first instead of bothering his friend, the man already doing more than his fair share when it came to taking care of Sam and Dean. Pushing the thought away, Sam prodded his brother for what he wanted to eat, the idea of yet another burger for lunch causing Sam's stomach to churn. Somehow, it seemed as though Dean could eat hamburgers for any meal of the day without becoming sick of them, which was something that Sam seemed unable to do. Knowing that he was going to have to swing by the nearest McDonalds after he was done at the library, Sam let his brother hang up first, deciding that he was going to take his time with the rest of his research to put off having to head through the drive-thru with the rest of the late-meal crowd.

Placing his phone back in his pocket for what felt like the umpteenth time, Sam returned to the computer, temporarily ditching his pursuit of learning about the Greek language in lieu of reading up on Dean's theory. As far as he knew, gnarls were parasitoids that fed off of the flesh of their victims, not their organs. However, if he remembered correctly, there were some occultists that believed the creatures dwelled in the depths of Hell, which might explain the presence of sulfur. Unfortunately, since the case with Dad that Dean had mentioned had been so long ago, when Sam was twelve, he didn't remember much of anything, his father leaving his youngest son out of the family business until he turned sixteen, only allowing Sam to do research until then since that was what he seemed to be best at. Still, Dad had killed the thing after only one day on the job, tracking it twenty-four hours straight until he cornered it in a cave just outside of Marathon, Texas.

Sitting back in his chair, Sam let his eyes scan the webpage detailing gnarls, taking in the same information that he had already known and finding nothing new. Switching back to his other sites, Sam attempted to soak up everything contained on the screen, only for his mind for wander aimlessly in another direction. Only a few seconds ago, Dean had managed to mention their father on his own, his brother having previously clammed up on talking about him for the past three weeks unless Sam prompted him to say something. While he knew it didn't mean much—or shouldn't, anyway—Sam saw it as a sign that his brother was beginning to deal with Dad's death, though both of them still had a long way to go. The pain and the hole it left behind was gaping and tearing wider with each moment that passed, the ones that reminded the brothers that their father was gone particularly agonizing. Still, with Dean's admission of Dad's existence after three weeks of nothing but grumbling, snapping, and overall unpleasantness, it was a start, maybe for both of them.

Rolling his shoulders back, Sam reached forward to click the print button on the top of the sites he was reading, deciding that maybe now would be a good time to head back to the motel rather than allow Dean to rot on his own out in the middle of nowhere. Getting up and collecting his things, Sam grabbed the pages out of the printer and handed the librarian staring expectantly at him the dollar that his ten sheets of paper cost. Receiving a smile in return, Sam grinned back before heading out to the lot, finding the bulky old truck parked in the same spot, water from the rainstorm that had clearly passed while he had been inside resting in little pools in the bed and on the roof.

Climbing into the cab, Sam placed his things in the passenger's seat and started the engine, the barely-working heater blasting him as soon as the vehicle sputtered to life, the sound of it causing Sam to miss the Impala as much as he was sure his brother was. In all the years that Dean had had it, and Dad before that, they had managed to get the old car running better than a new one, Dean fine-tuning everything to his liking as soon as it had been given to him on his eighteenth birthday and even continuing to do so now, almost ten years later. When it had been wrecked, Sam had known his brother would get it running smoothly again, maybe even better than before, despite Bobby's diagnosis that the thing was totaled. Though Sam would never admit it aloud, that car was their lifeline, their home. Being without it, hunting without it, felt like a hole that was missing, one that added to the void that Dad's death left behind.

Letting out a deep breath and clearing his thoughts away, Sam backed the Ranger out of the stall and headed for the road, the giant red-and-yellow M glowing like a beacon in the bleak town, shining like an arrow pointing Sam where to go.


	9. Eight

EIGHT

Hughes County Clerk's Office  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Wednesday, November 22, 2006  
6:49 PM

**D**ean had been surprised to learn that the County Clerk's Office was still open after five o'clock, especially given that it was the day before Thanksgiving and half of Pierre appeared to be closed down. Navigating the Ranger through the town's muddy streets, Dean kept the truck's pace slow as he pointed his brother and himself toward the building that was their destination—a small, stucco place that sat within a group of similar edifices which made up the area's one office complex, the set of them shadowed underneath the yellow streetlamps that lined the road leading to them.

Sam hadn't returned to the motel more than a couple of hours ago, his hands full with bags of food and brain stuffed with information that added nothing to their case. Though Dean was sure it would be interesting to know that the Greek language had made subtle changes in the nearly five-thousand years since its inception, he also didn't care enough to retain that fact in his mind, Dean shutting his brother up before he could get into the finer details of the things he had been reading while waiting in the long line at the McDonalds drive-thru. As soon as the two had finished catching each other up on what they had learned in their time apart—Sam telling his older brother what Bobby had said and the differences between the two arrowheads, whereas Dean only informed him that he had taken an interest in looking more into the idea of gnarls—they had taken a break to eat, supposing what they should do next while Dean gnawed on his burger and Sam chomped at his salad.

It hadn't taken either of them long to realize that they had been so sidetracked by the presence of objects and sulfur that they had completely forgotten to look into the background of the victims at hand. Wondering whether or not he should head back to the library, Sam had nearly left the room before a proposition struck Dean, one that he had been surprised to hear come out of his own mouth. Suggesting that they head down to the County Clerk's Office, Sam had stopped in the doorway to look at his brother, the startled look in his expression quickly followed by a smile. However, there was still the familiar problem of coming up with an alias that would appease whoever worked inside the building, some security officer or whoever might stop them to find out what they were doing there, a problem that didn't seem to last long, Sam apparently on a roll in terms of lying to the authorities.

Donning clean jeans and as close to matching shirts as they could, the brothers had ditched the motel a little before six, making the drive into town on the treacherous, water-logged roads. While Dean knew that what they were doing was likely to get them caught, and was no more plausible than the cover they had used earlier in the day, he also had faith in both of their abilities to adlib, the brothers having worked together before to talk their way out of and into a situation. On the ride in, Sam had called ahead, planting the idea into the person who had answered the phone's head that they were pest inspectors coming by to give the building its monthly spray, apologizing several times over for showing up so late in the day and promising a discount on the next billing cycle for the delay, whoever Sam was talking to sounding harsh and irritable. Though Sam had hung up seeming unsatisfied by the conversation, he hadn't told Dean to turn around, their destination only a few minutes away, giving them enough time to fall back in case they needed to take a moment to come up with something better.

Stalling at the red light before pulling into the lot the group of short structures provided, Dean cast a glance at his brother before exchanging an undeterred nod, Dean taking this as a sign that all systems were go and parking the Ranger into a stall five down from the door of the building they were about to head into. Though he knew it was unlikely that whatever employees were still working inside would be able to see more than the front grill of the truck from any angle, Dean didn't want to take the chance, someone attempting to make sure they were legitimate by trying to find labeling on the side of the truck authenticating them as employees of Pierre Pest Protection likely to blow their cover in seconds as soon as they found nothing. Dean didn't want to deal with anyone prodding him with questions, anyway. He already had enough on his plate.

Getting out of the cab and walking slowly toward the front entrance, Dean surveyed the outside, taking in the windows that they passed and noticing that they were small, high up two-by-two squares, a pair to each room behind them. Though he was sure they would be easy to slip through should they have to escape in a hurry, reaching them would be the hard part. Even at six-foot-one, Dean's shoulder barely grazed the sill, Sam's three-inches-taller frame still looking short in comparison. Figuring there would probably be boosts inside, Dean disregarded the sense of entrapment the tiny panes of glass temporarily gave him, instead pulling open the doors and heading inside behind his brother as Sam lead the way.

Staring over at them from where she sat at the front desk impeding them from walking further in was a woman dressed in a black business suit, her dark hair pinned back to make her face appear severe and constrained, the lines in her expression showing a look that seemed unyielding of any disturbances. Approaching her, though pausing in the entrance to take in the glare the woman was sending their way, Dean stepped in front of his brother in an attempt to take control of the situation before anything could get out of hand, or before inquiries about what they were doing there could be tossed from across the room.

Clearing his throat and flashing a non-descript badge, Dean introduced himself and his brother as the same names as from before, the woman seeming not to recognize Michael Wilton and Randy Gane from anywhere, though pursing her lips tighter in disbelief the more Dean spoke. Not saying much of anything as Dean continued to try to ask for permission to walk the premises, the woman's glare narrowed, her eyes seeming to hold a test of truth as she watched Dean struggle with his words, Dean repeating the same question seven different ways over and over again until the woman in black finally opened her mouth.

"I will be notifying your superiors of your tardiness," the woman eventually said, her voice thick with a harsh English accent, the prissiness and randomness of it giving Dean the sense that something was off. "I ask that you do not stain the floors or the rugs of the offices you intrude upon, and that you leave the windows cracked in any area that you tend to. Is that understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," Sam piped up, nodding and offering her his sincerest smile.

Shooting it down by narrowing her eyes more, the woman shooed them off, her stare following the brothers as they made their way down the hall to her right, disappearing a few moments later as they rounded a corner. Exchanging confused glances, Dean shrugged while Sam began trying doors, seeing which ones would open and which ones wouldn't, both of them heading inside and taking a look around as soon as they discovered an unlocked office.

"So, what are we hoping to find here?" Dean asked, whispering as he opened folders from inside of file cabinets, finding nothing but copies of e-mails about building commissions and acreage acquirements in the one he was reading.

"I don't know. Anything on the victims, I guess," Sam frowned.

"Yeah, well, something tells me we aren't in the right room."

Nodding in agreement, Sam shut the clasped envelope he was peering into and shoved it back into place, quietly shutting the drawer of the cabinet and turning to survey the room one more time before heading for the door, peeking out into the hall both ways before signaling for Dean to follow him. Continuing their way down the corridor, Dean and Sam split up to take two different sides, each of them entering whatever open area they found themselves while the other stood watch outside, Dean getting the growing sense that what they were looking for was being guarded by the strict Head-Librarian-in-training behind the front desk, the sinking feeling in his gut expanding at the idea of having to talk to her again.

Though Dean and Sam have been inside offices like these before and knew exactly how they worked—with whoever was requesting information having to bring a legitimate photo ID to the front in order to have to fill out a form and wait an hour for processing and procurement of whatever was being searched for—Dean had a feeling it would raise a few red flags if they came in asking for a folder of birth and marriage certificates and tax records on two people whose deaths were currently under investigation. Before they had even considered using aliases, both brothers had realized how conspicuous it would be for two men without any authority to come in and start looking through files the police had undoubtedly searched through themselves, which had been what had prompted them to come up with the bug inspector idea—a manual search of the items they wanted probably taking a shorter time to find on their own, anyway.

Standing outside of an office on the opposite side of the building from where they had started, Dean bounced on his heels anxiously while Sam searched the inside, the sound of nearly silent wheels rolling as his brother pulled open drawers reaching Dean's ears as he strained his hearing. Suddenly, the sound of whistling carried out toward him, Sam's short, demanding trill causing Dean to fall flat on his feet and rush inside the room, shutting the door quietly behind him before rounding the desk that took up most of the space. Bent over a splayed-out folder, Sam trained his flashlight on what appeared to be a list of names and the location of their records, most people sorted alphabetically, with the top half of the alphabet being placed in HR1 whereas the other half was in HR2.

"You got a map?" Dean asked, looking around the room for something that would indicate where those two listed places would be.

"Right here," Sam said, shoving a piece of paper in front of his brother, the faded ink barely visible in the dark. "Thankfully, it's not that far from here. We're going to have to be careful, though. It's right next to the front entrance."

"Great," Dean frowned, rolling his shoulders back as Sam closed the folder and left it where it was, heading for the door and checking for anyone coming again before waving Dean out of the office.

Making their way down the hallway as quietly as they could, Sam and Dean tiptoed toward a pair of doors at the end of the infinite corridor, the passageway they were traveling down seeming to loop the building, starting and ending with the desk in which the woman remained perched. Straightening up as they rounded the last corner, the brothers exchanged a worried glance before nodding to one another, Dean swallowing hard and holding his breath as they neared the archway labeled HR1 with a shining gold plaque that reflected in the overhead light. Trying as quietly as they could to approach it without making any noise, Dean peered around, looking for any sign of the woman, and hoping against hope that the door would be unlocked and easy to open.

Heart thudding in his chest, Dean closed in on the door first, Sam a step behind him and stopping to stand watch while Dean attempted to silently turn the knob. Making it all the way around, the entrance popped open just as quietly as the turning handle, allowing the brothers to slip through the small gap between the ornate wood and its jamb before shutting it behind them and letting out a long, deep breath of thankfulness as they looked around. From what he could see in the dark, the room they now stood in the middle of appeared to be nothing more than a scattered library, with carpet underfoot and various filing cabinets lining the walls, all with labels on them detailing what was inside. On the walls, cliché reprinted portraits hung from their frames, along with the same motivational posters that Dean remembered seeing back in high school.

"So, split up?" Sam asked after a long moment of staring.

"Sounds good," Dean nodded, immediately crossing over to the nearest cabinet.

Pulling out his cell phone to use the light to read the labels on the drawers, Dean ran his fingers gingerly over the cold metal they were encased in, eventually finding the section containing names starting with Es through Ex. Yanking it open, Dean allowed the drawer to push him backwards a good three feet, the length longer than he had initially assumed. Turning to the side of it, he began to paw his way through the names, passing Everard and Everdeen before eventually uncovering Everglade. Sliding out the file folder, Dean glanced across the way to find that his brother was doing the same, apparently discovering Bryan Jackson's information quicker, having already spread out the contents on top of a cabinet with a door left open.

Pushing a button on his mobile as the screen went black, Dean used the glowing blue to scan through the various marriage, birth, and homeowner's certificates contained inside, skimming each as he came across them before setting them aside. At the bottom, a copy of the man's credit card charges for the past year, as well as his recently-filed 1040 tax sheet, stared up at him, the former proving to be useless, unless Dean wanted to know that the man went to the hardware store more times than he could count, and quickly getting pushed away. Taking an interest in the latter, Dean narrowed his eyes to read the small font of the attached W-2, the document listing where the man worked and how much he had made in the previous year. Finding nothing odd about it, Dean got ready to nudge it aside before something triggered in his memory, something from their search of Bryan Jackson's apartment flashing in his mind: a bomber jacket lying on the floor of the living room with Bernstein Warehouse embroidered on the back.

"Hey, Sam, I think I found something," Dean muttered just loud enough for his brother to hear, hoping that his words wouldn't carry out through the doors, something about the woman they had had to bypass striking him as someone with bionic ears.

"What is it?" Sam asked, picking up his folder and carrying it with him over to where Dean stood across the room.

"I think I found our link between the victims," Dean said, noticing that Sam had been looking at the same thing his brother had moments before, the tax record displayed prominently on top and poised in a way that would perfectly make Dean's point. Dropping what he had been reading on top of what Sam had, Dean pointed at the similarity, Sam letting out a breath of surprise at the find.

"So they worked at the same place," Sam whispered. "Huh."

"Yep," Dean nodded. "And I'm willing to bet whatever this thing is is picking its victims that way. Hell, I'm willing to bet whatever this thing is works there, probably lying in wait just to find the perfect person to gank."

"What makes you say that?" Sam frowned.

Pulling out the credit card file, Dean placed it on top. "Check this out. The guy goes to the home improvement store almost every weekend. One week, he buys paint; the next, flowers. Seems to me the guy took pride in the way his house looked. And your guy? You remember all those beer cans lying around? All that rotten food in the fridge? It looked like the first vic did nothing more than ate and drank all day."

"Yeah, and?" Sam asked, furrowing his brows. "I'm not getting it."

"Everglade, seems like he was a visual person. His eyes go missing. Jackson, alcoholism in its finest form, loses a tongue. It seems to me like whatever's behind this is trying to send some sort of message," Dean said, hoping to drive his point home.

"What? Like a demon with a conscience?" Sam scoffed, a smirk on his lips.

"I don't know, maybe," Dean shrugged. "We _have_ seen some wacky crap in the past year. This wouldn't be any different."

"Yeah, I know," Sam conceded, letting out a deep breath.

Suddenly, before either brother could say any more, the sound of high heels clattering against the laminate floor outside caused Sam and Dean to stand rigidly, Dean snapping his cell phone shut and Sam switching off his flashlight as soon as the noise reached their ears. Holding their breath, the brothers waited for it to pass, both praying that the door to HR1 wasn't about to open and reveal the woman from the front desk standing in the threshold. As soon as the sound was gone, both brothers relaxed, Dean looking around at the windows and finding that these seemed lower than the ones he had been inspecting before entering the building, one of them cracked open and appearing large enough for the Winchesters to slip out of.

Nodding toward it, Dean turned to Sam, a look of wide-eyed worry that they would be discovered crossing the latter's face for a moment before disappearing, Sam's gaze turning to match his older brother's as they both stared at their way out and away from the vulture at the entrance—the woman seeming to exude anxiety in a way that made Dean uncomfortable.

"What do you say we get out of here and head down to Bernstein to see what's what?" Dean asked, clapping a reassuring hand against Sam's shoulder.

Nodding, Sam bit his lip before answering, the prospect of leaving the County Clerk's Office in the dust causing his body to relax. "Yeah, sounds good."

Turning around to collect the file folders both he and his brother had retrieved, Dean placed them under his arm before following Sam to the window, his brother slipping head-first over the sill and somehow landing on his feet on the other side. Passing the information they had come there for through the gap between them, Dean tried to slip through as easily as Sam had, the height difference working against Dean and causing him to fall unceremoniously onto his back, his shoulder taking the brunt of the hit and stinging as he stood.

"You alright?" Sam asked, helping Dean to his feet.

Nodding, Dean massaged the ache with his hand before nodding. "I'm fine."

Bunching his jaw for a second, Sam lead their way through the dead bushes surrounding the building and toward the Ranger, the precaution Dean had taken beforehand paying off and actually placing their vehicle closer to them than expected. Hopping behind the wheel, Dean started the engine and glanced toward the glass doors of the building one last time, something about the woman that had been sitting there leaving him with the feeling that something about her was off. Shaking his head and clearing his thoughts away, Dean pulled out onto the road and away from the office complex, Sam reading him the address to their next destination before sitting back to enjoy the ride.


	10. Nine

NINE

Bernstein Warehouse  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Wednesday, November 22, 2006  
9:01 PM

**D**ave Seeger pushed around the papers on his desk, half-way between burying his head in them and shredding them altogether. His coffee sat beside him, cold and completely untouched, asking to be knocked over as it rested precariously on the edge of the cheap cedar slab that was supposed to double as his work station and lunch counter.

At nine in the evening, on most days, Bernstein Warehouse would be empty and devoid of people, every person that worked there gone for the day, home with their families or out with their friends, the night winding down into the time most people got ready to go to bed. Usually, Dave would be one of the only employees left alone inside the spacious building, nestled up at his desk with numbers flashing across the computer screen that were supposed to tally up to the amount of cargo the shipping warehouse received in the day, along with the dollar amounts of each product obtained. Every night, Dave would stay behind in an attempt to count inventory and make sure the digits displayed in the Excel document were correct, usually sending off his disclosed e-mail around ten before heading home.

Dave worked hard. Since he was a kid, he had always strived to do his best with everything he did, finding out by the age of four that working hard sometimes lead to a weighty payoff that reflected his efforts—though not always since he knew most people were cheap bastards. When he was in high school, he had wanted to go to college, earning straight A's and getting accepted to the University of Southern California, a scholarship the state of Wyoming was willing to offer funding his entire four years. When his plans for higher education failed, his father dying a month before graduation and leaving him as the bread winner of his family, Dave had taken up his post as man of the house and gotten a job at the local grocery store, quickly climbing into a management position at the small supermarket before getting married to Sheila at the age of nineteen.

Shelia had been great, she really had. She had loved him and cared for him and supported him in all of his endeavors. When Dave had wanted to cut back on working to try to get into the nearby college in order to play catch-up, she had willingly taken a job at the McDonalds in the center of town in order to make up for the money they would be losing. When that hadn't come to fruition and Dave had instead wanted to use the savings they had hidden away in hopes of buying a new car to fund his venture into the diner business, Shelia had been right there beside him. Most of all, when the diner had gone under and Dave had had to resign himself to the unemployment line, Shelia had worked overtime in order to pay the bills, never complaining or ordering him to find something that would give them the money they needed.

Unfortunately, after a decade of a marriage that seemed to be going in the best of directions, Dave getting his job back at the same grocery store he had worked at years before and saving Shelia from having to pick up the slack, a car accident had changed everything, Shelia dying on the night of her thirtieth birthday and sending Dave into a spiral he thought he would never recover from. Every day following the accident, he had shown up for work and hidden his depression, but it had only been two weeks before he had decided to leave Bethel, Wyoming for somewhere that wouldn't remind him of his dead wife, a small town in South Dakota.

It had been ten years since Dave had moved to Pierre, starting at the bottom of Bernstein and climbing his way up as slowly as possible, every management job he wanted getting taken by people who had been there longer or who had managed to fight their way into the position tooth-and-nail. He hadn't minded it, not in the slightest, even though he probably should have. With the city's cost of living being severely less than even middle-of-nowhere Wyoming, Dave hadn't had much to pay for or much to do, the warehouse job being just as boring as the town it resided in. On Friday nights, he stayed in. On Saturday mornings, he watched cartoons. Sundays, he tried to go to church—but with only one in town, he kept running into the same people he saw during the weekday, deterring him from continuing attending. Every other day, he had been hard at work, tuning out his thoughts as he carried heavy boxes off of a semi truck and dropped them onto a wooden pallet to be wrapped with plastic, positioning the crate everything was loaded onto under different docking stations to be taken to different stores. It was monotonous, it was mindless, and it was easy, giving Dave an air of confidence the longer he stayed on the job and the less it changed from day-to-day.

However, after three years of being there, he had finally been promoted to supervisor, with his title of manager coming four years after that. Though it felt good to be in charge, especially since most of the guys he managed had been the same ones he had started out with, the complications the job came with weren't as easy as he had initially thought. Being a manager at Bernstein Warehouse meant doing everything for everyone, even making sure they had a special kind of Yuban coffee on hand whenever the regional manager came by for an unexpected visit—a man who could shut down the facility with a flick of his wrist should he decide that Bernstein wasn't working out for him and _his_ employers. Almost every moment that Dave was on the clock, he sat rigidly at his desk as he worried constantly whether or not the slamming of the door he had heard in the distance had been one of his men exiting through the front to get something out of their car or Richard Wright showing up to see how things were going. More often than not, the latter was more true than the former.

But today, thankfully, the plant was supposedly closed, all of his workers gone for the next few days in order to spend Thanksgiving with their families, leaving Dave to sit behind his desk as he pressed through what he had to get done before midnight, his family sitting at home back in Wyoming, probably getting ready for the holiday without him as he abstained from their festivities for a decade in a row. The first year he had declined showing up to his parents' house for the feast, his mother had cried on the phone, saying that she missed him over and over again without stopping for an hour; but every year after that had been easier, Dave's mother not even calling after the third time, giving him the idea that she had become just as distant with him as he was with everyone else.

This year, though, if anyone _were _to call asking why he wasn't coming, he wouldn't have to make up an excuse such as booked flights or broken-down cars, something that would keep him from getting on a plane to Bethel. With the minutes ticking by that Dave had left to file reports on one of his former employee's work records, sending them off to insurance agencies and the police and whoever else had wanted them, he had a legitimate reason as to why he hadn't caught a plane into his hometown yet. Each company had requested affidavits on Bryan Jackson's behalf, a character reference that they would use in their investigations of the man's murder, with each outfit requesting that Dave write something different, the police strictly forbidding a copy-and-paste job like he originally would have done. Unfortunately, with a deadline of the night before a national holiday, and with there only being so many ways Dave could say his employee was "nice, lively, and a little lazy", the hours were passing quickly underneath him, tripping him up whenever he glanced at the clock. He had been there before six in the morning. The fact that it was now nine in the evening was astounding.

Restlessness was coming over him the longer he sat there, the longer the lined pages in front of him taunted him with their brazen starkness. So far, he had only managed to write a few words describing Bryan, a man he had hardly ever seen, his pencil tapping against the desk in a rhythm that Dave couldn't stop nor stand to hear any longer. Behind him, the clock ticked away endlessly, as though timing Dave and testing his ability to let the bullshit fly. Though he normally would be able to come up with something at the drop of a hat, his years of having to do so for Regional Manager Richard Wright causing it to become second nature, the fact that he was writing this for the authorities caused him to forgo lying completely just to get the job done, knowing that the truth had to be told rather than two pages of handwritten crap that could have described anyone. His first drafts, the ones he had taken to scribbling down at home, had been like that, unspecific niceties that were blander than bland, Dave feeling good about what he had penned up until the point that he read it back. Blatant falsehoods had glared up at him like blaring red flags, causing him to trash it, Dave putting the task off for as long as he could as soon as the balls of paper had hit the bottom of the bin. However, as the few days he had passed, his deadline had loomed over him like a black cloud, with Dave finally deciding on Tuesday night to spend his day off at the office in order to keep from the distractions the television and the Internet offered—both of them calling like a siren's song whenever he had something to complete, his willpower weak against the tantalizing idea of playing computer games or tuning into _Sport's Center_ for hours on end.

Continuing to tap the tip of his pencil against the top of the desk, Dave took a deep breath and pursed his lips, getting ready to poise the infamous number two over the page the moment the phone beside him rang loudly, the cup of coffee he had been worried about spilling over the second Dave jumped up out of surprise.

"Great!"

Snatching the receiver, Dave spoke to the person on the other end of the line, quickly learning that it was the same detective he had conversed with the other day, the one asking for the summary of Bryan Jackson's work life from a guy who had barely known him, the detective probably calling to make sure it was getting done on time by checking in the day before. However, the more Dave listened to the other man's gruff tones, the more Dave understood that this call wasn't just a routine rally of information, some attempt to pressure Dave into writing the sworn statement faster to get it out of the way. Repeating it four times, Dave had barely heard what the detective had said, the words "dead" and "Pat Everglade" barely reaching his ears as he attempted to soak in what was being told to him, Dave hanging up the phone without saying goodbye or making sure the man was finished before doing so. Pat had been a friend, a long time buddy. Dave had been trained by the man years ago, and had gone out with his family a couple of times after work over the decade that they had known each other. The fact that his kind, hand-working, honorable friend was gone was unbelievable, and the way the detective had described it had made it seem even more unreal.

_"His eyes… missing… bled out… dead."_

Now more than ever did Dave want to throw everything from his desk onto the floor, the frustration the ticking clock provided causing Dave to skip from denial head-on into anger. He was already agitated at the detective's request when it came to Bryan Jackson, but to have to be told over the phone that his friend was dead, that it didn't warrant a personal visit? That made it seem so unimportant, so much like a lie. No, Pat couldn't be dead. His friend was at home, getting ready for Thanksgiving, waiting for his wife and kids to come home from Arizona. This was a trick to get Dave to…

No matter how many ways Dave tried to rationalize what had been told to him over the phone, something in his gut told him it was true. As his insides began to sink to the floor and his heart beat in a heavy thud, Dave knew that Pat Everglade was gone. Getting up from his chair to walk around the facility, his legs feeling thick as he moved, Dave edged his way out of his office, wrapping his jacket tighter around him as he made his way through the cold warehouse, the entire building stocked with merchandise and the floor littered with debris that should have been picked up before his men went home for the day on the evening prior.

Heading for the break room on the opposite side of the building, to listen to the white noise of the soda machine if nothing else, Dave kicked at the ground as he walked, his feet disturbing little piles of plastic and cardboard as he did so. Reaching the door to his destination, Dave bent down to pick up something that had been skidding along the floor the entire way, a small black object that looked like it had fallen out of a Native American's pocket. Turning it over in his hand as he headed for one of the many round tables situated inside the room, Dave gave it a closer look as he sat in a rickety chair, the arrowhead in his palm enticing him into staring at it, the hasty edges of it drawing his attention more than anything else. The way it was cut appeared ancient, as though—

All at once, the sound of a heavy car door slamming shut outside broke Dave's attention at the same time as a thick presence carried into the room, casting a black cloud over the space as though suffocating the area. Looking up from where he was staring down at his hands, Dave gasped as something in front of him caught his eye, causing him to freeze as a man dressed completely in black stood before him, a smile plastered on his face that was more frightening than the unknown footsteps heading down the hall on the other side of the building.

Pulling out a jagged knife, the man in black grinned wider as Dave jumped out of his chair, backing away from the weapon and the smirk behind it. Putting the table between them, Dave attempted to keep his focus on the stranger as well as the heavy footfalls coming his way, Dave shouting for help as they got closer. Chancing a glance away from the advancing armed lunatic, Dave saw two tall men standing in the doorway, one reaching behind him for something as the other began speaking quickly, the stranger with the blade reacting immediately to the words and letting out a savage growl, his hand flying forward at the same time the door to the break room slammed shut.

Turning his blackened stare onto Dave, the man's smirk faded into a frown, the haunting glare—which had to be a trick of the light, there was no way anyone's eyes could be that dark and menacing—causing Dave's heart to stop beating for a moment as the knife was raised in a threatening way. Getting ready to about-face and run, Dave steeled himself before taking his chance to get out of there, certain he would be able to put enough distance between them that would keep Dave safe. However, before he had even pivoted an inch, the man was in front of him, his hands reaching out to place the dagger behind Dave's ear, agony ripping through him a second later as blood spurted everywhere, Dave's scream sounding suppressed and quiet despite the shrillness that his vibrating vocal chords suggested.

Within half a second, another slice caused Dave to bend over in sheer pain, the sides of his head feeling as though they were on fire. A moment later, when the ache became coupled with intense curiosity, Dave looked up at the man standing before him, his eyes pleading the stranger to explain why he was doing this, instead only seeing an expression of satisfaction as the man wrapped Dave's severed, bloody ears inside of a white handkerchief, the man in black disappearing entirely in the blink of an eye not long after.

Suddenly, the door to his right burst open to reveal the blurry forms of the other two strangers rushing to his side, Dave's vision going quickly as the blood rushing out of his wounds threatened to knock him out. At that moment, though Dave didn't know who these two were or what they were doing there, he had been certain they were there to finish him off. As darkness began to dull his senses, Dave fell to the floor, his head hitting the pavement with a strong enough blow to knock him unconscious, blood splattering the ground and his face as his eyes fell shut.

* * *

Dropping down to his knees beside the man who had recently suffered an ear-ectomy, Dean reached into his pocket to pull out his phone, quickly dialing 9-1-1 and talking to the operator in a way that suggested their state of emergency. Beside the door, Sam's cell rang as he attempted to keep his eyes on the wounded third victim the case had provided, the caller ID reading Bobby Singer and causing Sam's heart to skip a beat.

"Hey, Bobby," Sam answered, his voice coming out sounding disappointed despite the fact he was anything but when it came to hearing from his friend, especially given that the older man was probably calling to pass along some information he had found.

"You alright, kid?"

Sighing quietly, Sam nodded to himself, fully aware that his friend couldn't see it. Relaying what had just happened, Bobby listened carefully on the other end of the line, Dean snapping his phone shut across the room after finishing the call for an ambulance. When he was done, Sam paused to hear what Bobby had to say, the line going quiet for a moment before the older man spoke up, letting both brothers, as Sam put it on speakerphone, know that he had managed to dig up something on the job they were working.

"You boys might want to take a seat for this one. It's big."

"How big?" Dean asked, pursing his lips in thought.

Silence.

"Huge."


	11. Ten

TEN

Pierre Pine Inn  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Wednesday, November 22, 2006  
10:15 PM

**S**am and Dean Winchester sat beside one another on the bed as they held the phone between them, Bobby Singer's voice resonating throughout the motel room as he filled them in on what exactly they were hunting and why the man had made their situation sound so grave. They had been sitting there for the past twenty minutes, getting brought up to speed on the details they had been unable to uncover on their own, each minute that ticked by feeling like an hour as the brothers listened to their friend's strong, Southern-accented voice.

Though the conversation had had to be put on hold from when the man had called the first time—the guy who was next up on their interview list, Dave Seeger according to a directory posted at Bernstein Warehouse's front entrance, having been mutilated right before the brothers' eyes and causing them to have to high-tail it out of there to avoid being questioned by the authorities—Dean had floored it in order to get back to their room to call Bobby in private, something about the way the man had made their case seem treacherous causing both Winchesters to want to soak up as much information as they could somewhere they weren't afraid of being interrupted or overheard.

On the drive back to their motel, it had been clear that the cab of the truck was filled with inverted thoughts, Sam wondering if what his friend was going to tell them had anything to do with The Demon, whereas Dean was undoubtedly pondering the same. Though they didn't vocalize what they were thinking aloud, Sam could see his brother's suppositions written all over his face, the speed in which Dean was driving giving Sam enough of a hint toward what Dean was speculating.

In truth, if this job did have anything to do with The Demon, Sam didn't know if he and his brother were ready to face it. The last time they had seen it in its true form—when it had been in the middle of a burning bedroom, its flashing yellow eyes taunting Sam without the creature having said a single word—Sam had been willing to risk his life just to kill the thing, but at that time, they had had something that would give them a one-up on their enemy: The Colt. However, just like The Demon had disappeared right after Dad had died, so had their demon-killing gun, leaving the brothers powerless against the thing unless they could manage to corner it underneath a Devil's Trap in order to exorcise it. Though that seemed unlikely, especially since this thing had managed to evade John Winchester and his expert tracking for over two decades, it might be their only option without The Colt, especially if it was going around killing people in small-town South Dakota.

Letting his mind wander the closer they got to the motel, Sam let himself imagine what would happen should this job really be a direct link to the creature the Winchesters had been hunting all of their lives. In his mind's eye, he could see the thing and its luminous, frightening gaze, the stare causing both brothers to halt in place in fear of getting any closer. It would be just them and it in a room, with no other creatures there to prevent the showdown that Sam wanted to happen about as badly as he wanted his father alive. In his imagination, Sam crashed into The Demon, with the thing throwing him off of it and into a wall, holding him there with its telekinetic abilities while Dean attempted to distract it. Unfortunately, even in Sam's head, the brothers couldn't get an upper hand, Dean's tries to tear The Demon's thoughts away from Sam going unsuccessful and causing Dean to become pinned as well. Ultimately, though he knew the situation wasn't real, Sam knew that both of them were done for, the brothers battling without the gun being what had done them in.

Snapping out of his thoughts as the Ranger approached the Pierre Pine Inn, Sam jumped out of the passenger's seat and immediately dialed Bobby, the phone picking up the moment Dean shut the motel's door behind them. Taking a seat on the bed, Sam placed the mobile on speakerphone, balancing the device between them on his knee while both of them leaned in in an attempt to hear better. At first, the conversation had started out slow, with Bobby recapping how he had gotten to the solution before Dean had waved that away for bigger fish, Bobby apparently trying to put off telling them what he had to tell them for as long as possible, the news seemingly that unpleasant.

"This thing you're hunting, it's a demon called The Collector," Bobby began as Sam twirled the third arrowhead between his fingers, this one found underneath the table Dave Seeger had been lying beside. Frowning, Sam and Dean exchanged confused glances, Bobby continuing as the two looked at one another. "Basically, the only time this thing is summoned is if someone needs some high-ticket items collected, which was how it got its name. The last time this guy was topside, it was still The Dark Ages."

"Okay, so what's the bad?" Dean asked, shrugging his shoulders. "We have a demon on our hands that doubles as a hoarder. We can deal with that."

"Because, son, this guy ain't just any demon. He's a demon foot soldier," Bobby said, irritation in his tone, though still buried underneath the severity he was trying to portray. "If demons had hitmen, he would be high on their hiring list. He gets in, he gets out, and he gets what he came for, usually without leaving a mess. Whoever hired him has to be up to something. This guy ain't called on for nothing."

"So, what are you thinking, Bobby? That this thing is collecting body parts? For what? Do you think it has anything to do with…" Sam trailed off, pausing to take his friend's words to heart. Though a small part of him told him that this case was floating farther and farther away from being connected to their demon, Sam still held out hope, attempting to grab onto the link that would take them straight to vengeance with an iron grip.

On the other end of the line, silence grew as Bobby thought, the man eventually speaking a couple of minutes later to turn Sam down. "I don't think this has anything to do with what killed your daddy, Sam. I think this might be something else, something new. I don't want to make it sound worse than it is, but if someone higher up the food chain is using The Collector to get things done, I'm guessing we might have something pulling the reigns that doesn't like to get their hands dirty. Based on what you've told me about your demon, it seems like he doesn't have any problems digging right in."

"So what _is_ it doing this for?" Dean asked, pursing his lips. "Some kind of spell?"

"More than likely, yes," Bobby said. "You know those arrowheads you boys found? The writing on the side is a message."

Raising his eyebrows in surprise, Dean glanced at Sam. "Saying what?"

"'_Between the buried and the Heavens, there is but one enemy._'"

"What the hell does that mean?" Sam asked, furrowing his brow.

"No idea," Bobby replied with a sigh.

Letting quiet permeate the line, Sam glanced down at the arrowhead placed between his fingers, the sides of this one completely smooth and without anything that would expand on the thought imprinted on the first two. Though Sam had more questions, such as why the first two had gone missing and how they should best go about tracking down The Collector, the stillness between him and his brother, and Bobby by extension, was too thought-provoking, Sam letting his mind wander as he considered what exactly this thing and its employer were up to.

So far, now, they had two demons with two master plans, one, if not both, with an agenda that directly involved him and his family. While Sam wasn't naïve enough to believe that, of all the demons in the world, the one he and Dean were gunning after was the only one with an ulterior motive, he couldn't help but wonder if Bobby was wrong in assuming that this thing had nothing to do with the creature that had ruined the Winchester family, something in his gut telling him that his friend's presumption about The Demon and its want to get its hands dirty was a little off. It was possible that the thing had hired The Collector because it was busy or because it had wanted someone to do its work while it remained underground. However, the only way to know for sure would be to find where this thing was an attempt to gain some sort of clue from it. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done.

"So, how are we supposed to get this thing before it gets someone else?" Dean asked, interrupting the silence that packed the room.

"I'm guessing you boys got yourself another party favor from that last victim," Bobby said, clearing his throat. "Hold onto it. Make sure it doesn't go vanishing on you. That thing works as a calling card. If this thing doesn't get all of its stuff back, it goes hunting for it. You hold onto it and it'll come straight to you. You boys know what to do from there."

Nodding and wrapping his fingers around the arrowhead tighter, Sam looked over at Dean as his brother thanked their friend and hung up, handing Sam's phone back to him and getting up to grab the keys to the truck, a couple of the things they needed to prepare for a surprise demon visit sitting in the backseat. Keeping his hand firmly enfolding around the dulled edges of the object becoming glued to his palm with sweat, Sam stood and crossed over to the pile of books he had placed there earlier in the morning, finding the biggest one on the bottom and dragging it out. The volume had been the same one that had taught Sam about Devil's Traps, the same one Bobby had given him to keep right before the accident with the Impala. Inside contained everything Sam needed to know when it came to drawing the demonic cage in intricate detail, the only thing missing being something to sketch it with.

Finding an oversized Sharpie that was lodged at the bottom of Dean's duffle bag, Sam pulled it out and grabbed a chair, setting to work as he reached up to draw on the ceiling, Dean returning from outside to lay salt in the windowsill and under the bathroom door in case The Collector decided to use any other entrance aside from the front. After half an hour of work, with Sam constantly checking for both the arrowhead and that his depiction of the Key of Solomon was correct, the brothers stood back and got ready for an encounter with the demon, neither of them certain as to what was going to happen or how it would end.


	12. Eleven

ELEVEN

Pierre Pine Inn  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Thursday, November 23, 2006  
2:57 AM

**D**ean was getting tired of waiting around. As the minutes ticked by into hours, he began to give up hope that the demon was ever going to show its face, fear setting in that there had been another attack in its place, one that could have been avoided had he and his brother been out and about.

In the first hour since hanging up the phone with Bobby, the two had spent the entire time turning the room into a demon-free zone, salting and painting the room with various symbols that were bound to trap the creature in a powerless cage. As Sam did the drawing and Dean worked on making sure there were thick lines of white in the windowsill and under all the doors except for the front, the one to the small closet included, the room had grown quiet with a prepared silence, both brothers gearing up for a battle that may or may not happen.

Dean wasn't disillusioned enough to think that this demon would be punctual, or show up right on the nose to retrieve some small little object from the Winchesters. Though in his lifetime, he had only met a handful of the hellspawn, he knew enough about them to know that they were confident as well as cautious, anything that posed a threat against their survival becoming automatically flagged as not worth their time. It was a self-preservation that most creatures of the underworld possessed, the fear of getting axed more important than finishing what they started.

However, the opposite was also true. While demons were careful to ensure their longevity, they were also incredibly arrogant in terms of their abilities and their weaknesses, always believing that they would be the victor of the fight, no matter who they were coming up against. Though Dean knew that he and Sam didn't register high on the danger radar when it came to battling the supernatural things they killed, demons in general had also been avoiding the Winchesters since Dad's death, all reported cases of possession, at least those that Bobby informed to them of every now and again, happening half-way across the globe, all the hellions seeming to figure that wreaking havoc over in England and Scotland was better than sticking around in the United States. Because of this, Dean had gotten a feeling that the creatures were lying in wait, waiting for the dust to settle before striking, for the Winchesters to become comfortable in a demonless universe before letting something loose.

Unfortunately, now that they were faced with a demonic problem, Dean was stuck between a rock and a hard place, the unpredictability of these things giving him a headache as he tried to figure out what it would do and when it would strike, if ever. As midnight passed and Sam changed positions from where he was sitting on his bed, a book in his lap that might point out the best way to get rid of this thing should all their precautions fail, Dean began to pace the room anxiously, the idea of having to wait for something to appear causing him to become nervous. Never in his life had he liked standing around, waiting for something to show up so he could kill it. The last time he and his brother had done so had been when they were keeping watch outside of that couple's house, Dean falling asleep as Sam kept his eyes peeled for any murderous clowns. Still, that had been different. Then, they had been waiting for action to happen; now, they were waiting for the fight to come to them.

Popping his knuckles as he walked, Dean rolled his shoulders back and cracked his neck, his joints stiff from the rigidness in which he had been sitting at the desk near the door. As he walked, the sloshing of the flask filled with holy water in his jacket and the coldness of the pistol filled with bullets nuzzled against his back was all there was to distract Dean from his thoughts, his mind wandering back to the day of Dad's death and what his brother had told him about the man and the instructions he had given his youngest son, the list of items they would need for "protection from the demon". Though Sam was quick to point out that Bobby had filled him in that the opposite was true, that the acacia and Oil of Abramelin he had asked for actually summoned the creature rather than repelled it, Dean couldn't help but wonder why his father would want to call forth the thing that had killed his wife, that was going to kill his son.

Of all the things that Dad had been, secretive and mysterious had been two of the most underlining. For almost all of Dean's life, he had never known what his father was going to do or when he was going to return from doing it, Dad sometimes going on hunts for weeks at a time without so much as a goodbye. While it was highly likely that Bobby and Sam were right in assuming that John Winchester had been angling to send for the demon that had disrupted their lives over two decades ago, probably searching for a fight, something about that gave Dean a weird feeling, almost as though that didn't sit right with him. What would that do? What would that prove? In some way, had Dad sparred with the thing and lost, his life slowly slipping out of him before he had eventually dropped dead?

Shaking his head to get rid of the thoughts that were attempting to plague his brain and distract him from the task at hand, Dean stopped pacing by the door and grabbed one of the loaded shotguns off of the table, something he had been working on for the past few hours. While Sam had been reading, Dean had been handling the artillery, loading their supply of sawed-offs with shells full of rock salt—something they normally used on ghosts but was bound to work on demons, both creatures being just as kryptonited by the grains of sodium. Though Dean knew the mineral wasn't going to stop The Collector as well as it did with spirits, it would probably sting enough to get the brothers out of a tight spot should they find themselves in one—that is, _if _this thing were to ever show up.

Leaning the weapon against his shoulder, Dean resumed his pacing, feeling like a short-tempered soldier guarding a high-security building or prisoner. In truth, something in the back of Dean's mind told him this thing wasn't going to appear, the idea that this demon was topside for the first time in centuries giving him the sense that it wanted to stay out of Hell for a little while longer, risking its neck by coming to collect some insignificant object being out of the question. Though he could be wrong, and had been before, the way the hours were ticking by without avail backed up Dean's thoughts, two in the morning creeping by in a way that was almost painful.

"This guy makes Godot look punctual," Dean mumbled, rolling his eyes.

Across the room, Sam smirked to himself, apparently hearing his brother's comment and finding it amusing. Glancing over at him, Dean could see that the younger Winchester looked equally as uneasy on the outside as Dean felt on the inside, Sam's jaw tightening with disquiet as the smile fell away, his lips forming a hard line as he pressed them together anxiously. Taking that as a sign that his brother also believed something about this was wrong, as though there was a big lead-up that would be followed by a disappointing climax, Dean swung the shotgun from where it rested against his collarbone into the crook of his arm, tossing it on his empty bed a second later as if giving Sam a hint of resignation.

Unfortunately, Dean's last move had been a mistake. No later had the shotgun hit the mattress did the front door to their motel room fly open on its own, a figure dressed in a black pea coat, slacks, shoes, and leather gloves entering the room as the wind outside blew furiously, the door rattling against the wall its knob was embedded into from the force of the throw. Reaching Dean first, the demon wrapped its hands around his neck, the texture of the gloves proving to give the thing a solid grip on his throat as it lifted Dean off of his feet, its eyes inky pools of agitation as its brows knit together in frustration.

"Ah, the Winchesters," the demon smirked sardonically. "So we meet again."

* * *

The Collector had heard of the Winchesters in the time that he had taken his third trip away from Hell. According to some outlets, they were a force to be reckoned with, whereas some believed that the brother Hunters were nothing more than a slight nuisance. Still, word on the street had been to leave the youngest alone, orders being passed down through a circuit of other demons that were all attempting to formulate and follow through on the master plan, something everyone that dwelled in the depths of Hell was invested in.

A lot had changed since the last time The Collector had been topside, with modern conveniences such as indoor plumbing and electricity being the two most prominent. Though civilization seemed to be the same selfish, self-servicing bunch as they had been centuries before, The Collector could see that, more than ever, the world was becoming exponentially more complicated. With Hunters, men who had been seen as nothing greater than tampering pillagers eons ago, besting the demons they sought and becoming just as feared by the creatures they killed than by the ones doing the killing, the world was changing, demonkind's One True Enemy becoming par with those who hadn't been chosen but rather chose for themselves.

However, The Collector's instructions had been clear: to obtain the objects needed in order to push the plan forward. Though the task had been simple, something any demon could do, the one who had hired him had made it apparent that the damage must be contained. While he had left enough of a mess to be used as a neon sign that something was awry, it had been intentional, his superior wanting to summon those to the area that would prove their theory on the growing number of foes, both selected and elected, and the quickness of their responses, technology and communication advancing the arrival time. Unfortunately, from what The Collector had heard of the Winchesters, he had inadvertently managed to attract the attention of the pair that would be able to put a stop to his and his director's efforts, a warning about the brothers getting passed quickly to The Collector in a way that told him to speed up the process he had begun before they could interfere.

Thankfully, he had managed to complete his objectives with David Seeger's ears.

For the past few weeks, The Collector had been doing more for his job than just acquiring objects, but information as well. In the time that he had been watching the sleepy state capitol, the demon had noticed the gluttony, pride, and acedia that had been committed by his three victims, the men being chosen for these attributes alone. Though who he was working for and what the end result would wield was being kept confidential, The Collector had enough confidence in his contractor to put his attainments to good use, certain that nothing that would be beneficial to the human race would come of it.

As soon as The Collector had parted with his items at the previously-planned meeting place nearly half-way across the world, he had come back to Pierre, South Dakota to take care of one last thing. The objects in which he used as homing devices, strategically-placed beacons that allowed him to find his victims as soon as the things were touched, had to be compiled before he could truly retire from his employment under another demon. Created in Ancient Greece around the time of the first Olympics, his arrowheads had been fashioned in a way that was unique to him, the message on the side meant to be obscure. Though, then, The Collector hadn't been known as a demon but rather a man, he had had the items shaped for him to use as a weapon as a means of protection, his adverse viewing of the deities his fellow Grecians followed making him vulnerable to attacks. As the stone was molded around the tip of the arrow, The Collector had kept his bow in reserve, waiting for the day he would be assaulted by his neighbors in the city-state of Delphi, a day that never came. By the wizened age that The Collector was laid to rest, he had buried his arrows deep beneath the city to bar anyone else from using them, the man returning after his time spent in Tartarus to dig them up again, this time as one of the numerous spawns of Hell.

The last time The Collector had been topside had been during the reign of Pope Clement V. Though he had spent centuries before, having been exorcised in 1034 and not seeing the light of day again until 1300, honing and congregating his skills in order to be known as the hired hand, having worked as a scavenger as a human, the demon had done many other things in order to make a name for himself, such as becoming a key component in the disbandment of the Knights of Templar, his murder of important Church figures, as well as indebting King Philip IV of France to the Knights by way of manipulation, having set off dominos that eventually lead to fingers being pointed and arrests being made. Unfortunately, he had been exorcised less than a year after the final Papal investigation of the Templar, being left to roast in Hell for nearly seven centuries before being summoned again, this time by an unknown figure with an unknown face, someone who knew of his record.

He didn't ask questions and didn't need to, instead doing what he was told and delivering the goods as promptly as possible, the last thing he needed before heading off on his own being contained by the Winchesters. He had been warned about them by Avone—a severe demon posing as a desk receptionist, the one who had tipped him off about the brothers being in town—and had been passed the message about the younger of the pair. However, that meant that the eldest brother was free game, something The Collector could do anything with, though the demon had no desire to do much except scare the two out of looking for him again, The Collector wanting nothing more than to go off on his own until he was called for another service, the years he had spent in Hell giving him the sense that he needed to keep his head down as much as possible in order to stay on Earth for more than a decade, the torment and despair The Pit gave him even more than he could handle.

However, now that he had Dean Winchester in his grasp, with Sam not far away, The Collector had two choices as to what to do, the room littered with devil's traps that he was bound to get caught in if he wasn't careful. Slamming Dean into the wall as forceful as possible, the demon wrapped its gloved hand around the Hunter's throat, cutting off his oxygen while the sound of a shotgun cocking came from behind him. Tethering the younger brother to the sheetrock by thrusting forth his free hand, the weapon firing as it hit the ground and spraying salt everywhere but in his direction, The Collector kept his grip firm, baring its teeth and shining its black eyes by way of intimidation, the Winchesters keeping their stares locked on The Collector as he spoke, both of their gazes hollow as though attempting to put on a brave face the demon could see right through.

"I believe you have something of mine. I'd like it back."


	13. Twelve

TWELVE

Pierre Pine Inn  
Pierre, South Dakota  
Thursday, November 23, 2006  
3:38 AM

**S**eeing black spots form in front of his eyes as the demon's grip tightened around his neck, Dean barely heard what the thing had said, his entire thoughts focused solely on getting free and sucking air into his lungs. Across the way, through his vision's haze, Dean could see that his brother was tacked against the wall, struggling with all his might to release himself from the invisible hold The Collector had on him, his eyes wide and panicky as he caught sight of his older brother's worsening predicament.

Trying, and failing, with all his might to get the demon's fingers to loosen its grasp, Dean attempted to smack, kick, and claw at the creature whose clutch was about as crushing as a vice, its hand clamping itself around him as though strengthening its grasp with every struggle for freedom. Eventually, the icy clench became too much, Dean nearly passing out just as The Collector let him fall to the floor, the demon stepping away as his victim clawed at his neck, a red line forming around Dean's throat from the iron grip he had been held in.

Watching as the demon carefully stepped away, eyeing every devil's trap Sam had drawn on nearly every wall, and attempting to steer clear of them, Dean inhaled sharply, his lungs both drinking in the clean oxygen and burning from it at the same time. Getting to his feet when he felt ready to stand, Dean watched the much-taller creature tower over him, noticing that the thing seemed to be pondering its options as to what to do, the arrowhead it had come for still clasped firmly in Sam's hand as he remained pinned in place.

"Now, now, now. Isn't this dodgy?" The Collector asked, a slight British lilt leaking into its voice, somehow reminding Dean of the woman behind the desk at the County Clerk's Office and how out of place her English accent had been.

"Isn't it, though?" Dean snapped, still occasionally pawing at his neck, his words coming out sounding raspy with his Adam's apple feeling as though it was dislodged.

"Now, boys, you don't have to be rude. I only came here to do business and leave. I promise not to hurt one pretty little hair on your heads if you return me my object," the demon said with a smile that Dean didn't trust, the creature's eyes seeming deceptive in some way. Standing his ground while his brother's hand wrapped tighter around the arrowhead, Dean exchanged a nod with Sam, the younger Winchester seeming to be totally okay despite the fact that he had temporarily lost use of his muscles. Looking between them as though it had expected one of them to hand over the thing it was searching for, The Collector's grin turned into a frown the longer the brothers went without moving, a scowl becoming permanently fixed on the demon's face after a long moment. "Hoping I'll take it by force, are you? That can be arranged."

Tensing up for a moment when the demon turned to Sam, Dean furrowed his brows as he spoke, hoping to get The Collector's attention and distract it from whatever it was about to do to his brother. "What are you doing in town? What's your endgame?"

"Why, I don't have an _endgame_. I was only hired to carry out a task, one that will be finished the moment my item is returned. If you'd please?" the demon asked, holding out a hand in Sam's direction, his eyebrows raised as though giving the Hunter an expectant look.

Standing still for a moment longer, Dean eyed the floor carefully, the shotgun Sam had been hoping to use on The Collector lying forgotten on the ground, only a few feet from where Dean stood. If he rolled at precisely the right spot, he would be able to grab it in-motion, and would then stand with it locked and loaded to use on the demon. However, that was wishful thinking. Before he would hit the ground, the creature would already know what he was going to do and would head it off, most likely throwing Dean into the wall as well. Pursing his lips, Dean continued to glance around the small space, discovering that his only option for survival relied solely on that gun.

Deciding to go for it, Dean's shoulder took the brunt of the somersault, Dean managing to wrap his finger's around the weapon's hilt and land on his feet before the demon caught on, The Collector throwing out a hand to try to propel him into the bathroom portion of the room, with Dean managing to squeeze off a round beforehand that distracted it. Watching as the demon cried out in pain at being hit with a buckshot full of rock salt, Dean cocked the gun again and got ready to fire off another, The Collector using the short time it took Dean to prepare the shot to throw him into the sink. Landing at an awkward angle against the laminate countertop, Dean heard something pop at the same time as the gun rattled against the floor, the weapon falling at his feet with Dean following it close behind, sliding onto the parquet ground like a sack of potatoes, pain ripping through his shoulder from the impact. Standing up, Dean saw that his left arm fell limply at his side, the thing dislocated from its joint due to the way the demon had tossed him.

"Dean!" Sam shouted, still frozen in place, the sight of the injury worrying him.

"Now, my object?" The Collector asked, the smile returning to its face as soon as the demon saw Dean's gimp appendage, the challenge the damage posed the Hunter clearly appealing to it.

Not saying anything, Dean picked up the shotgun and cocked it with one hand, flipping it into the crook of his useless arm and firing aimlessly in succession at The Collector, a few shots hitting the creature while the rest missed. Watching as the demon's grin ebbed away, Dean tried a few more times to hit his target, the thing obviously catching sight of something in Dean's expression that made the battle between them less enjoyable.

In all honestly, as Dean was shooting off rounds, a strange sensation came over him, a sudden hatred that flooded every part of him that was new and fearful. With every blast, his loathing for the demon grew, his directionless shots seeming to build up his revulsion. In his mind's eye, he was firing at The Demon rather than the one in front of him, the yellow eyes Dean remembered seeing on his father's face sticking with him as he attempted to hit the moving target in front of him. Eventually, the gun clicked, his rounds expended, but his growing detestation expanding. As his eyes deadened and his lips became nothing but a solid line, Dean grabbed the gun with his good hand and flipped it around the best he could, holding the butt of the gun as though it was the barrel and bunting it straight into the demon's nose, blood spurting everywhere as soon as the wood hit cartilage.

Cursing loudly, and bending double as the red spewed onto the floor, the demon's eyes darkened, its voice lowering as it stood up, scarlet still running down its face and onto its clothes, the stain blackening the already black. "Playtime's over, children. Either you hand over what I came for, or you'll be in a world of pain."

"Looks like we're opting for pain," Dean muttered, ramming the shotgun into the demon again, this time with the creature grabbing the weapon and tossing it aside, its hand shooting up a moment later to stick Dean to the wall. With hardened determination, Dean forced himself away from The Collector's detainment, his hatred for the creature causing him to bypass every ability the thing could muster. Seeming unsurprised by Dean's disregard for the demon's kinetic hold, The Collector tried again, Dean's face changing into an expression of deep abhorrence as his green eyes deadened and the rest of his face fell lax. "What are you doing in town? What's your endgame?"

"I don't have time for this," the demon snapped, baring its teeth. A second later, Sam began to yelp in pain, his hand unfolding open on its own, with the arrowhead hitting the floor a moment after, the creature's grin returning once again. Rolling with his hurt shoulder reaching the carpet first, Dean winched in pain, wrapping his good hand around the pointed object before the demon could snag it. However, before he could stand, Dean felt his body lift off the ground, The Collector's fingers wrapped around his throat once again. "You don't learn, do you? I told you _now_ is not the _time_ for _fun_ and _games_."

Slamming Dean into the wall with every emphasized word, the demon bared its teeth in anger, snatching the thing it was there for out of Dean's hand before disappearing, Dean dropping to the ground a minute later, the impact causing his arm to hurt more than ever. Feeling Sam's digits enfold around his good elbow, Dean got to his feet, his brother helping him up and looking as though someone had broken his favorite toy, his face fallen into a furrowed brow and frown, with his eyes going soft and curious. Forgetting it for now, Dean looked around the room to see nothing but a small pile of sulfur on the floor left behind by the demon, all other traces of it gone.

Slumping his unbroken shoulder in disappointment, Dean pursed his lips, his mind racing to connect the dots as to what had just happened and why the demon had left so abruptly. Usually, those things loved to beat up on the less-armed, mostly mashing them into a bloody pulp before leaving them to die for hours on end. This time, however, the creature had just up and disappeared, only slightly injuring Dean before departing. Because of that, Dean had a feeling something was wrong, something big, something that explained why Bobby had given them the indication that the situation they were in the middle of was much graver than they had originally thought.


	14. Thirteen

THIRTEEN

Abandoned Field  
Manitopa, Wisconsin  
Friday, November 24, 2006  
4:07 AM

**T**he plan had been forming for quite some time, but only recently had it gained traction. Over the years that had passed, the design had changed by small increments, the original proposal remaining somewhat the same. As information was gained and talent was acquired, additions had been put in place in order to formulate a stronger strategy, one that would become indestructible by the time it was realized.

The demons followed a leader who seemed sure of himself, a creature whose vision was so strong that it united the usually divided. As Hell congregated on every level to meet his view of a brighter future, the soulless beings that dwelled deep saw a sight of tomorrow that seemed impossible in the past. The fires that burned would become nothing but ash, and Earth would be open to all that lived below. The tortured would become the torturers, and the fear that they spread would run rampant. Blood would flow from every human vein, and demons would have the control they desired. All that stood in their way was one little thing.

There had been a time, before Jesus and before the Holy Roman Empire, where demons had held a seat of power that frightened the small population distributed throughout the seven continents. With religions that differed and regions that were widespread, it was easy for the hellions to influence those who were easily impressionable. As the corruption grew and the terror of their ways became known, and futile to struggle against, the demons had the upper hand, the power they contained blanketing the universe in terror. Wars were waged and dishonesty took the place of trust, and it was then that the demons were law.

It wasn't until much later that the world fought back. For centuries, the fearsome creatures ruled, with those who attempted to make a change immediately put to death. As demons took charge, making an example of the many that tried to restore the balance humanity longed for, their power became stronger. At the pinnacle of their supremacy, they had been imperishable, with no hand that wanted to strike them down ever succeeding. However, with all things, there was always a change that came as swift and unyielding as the wind, a force to be reckoned with that would challenge the fire the demons used to their advantage, a burning that worked on both structures and soul before leaving everything to fold into dust.

Since the day that the initial threat had first appeared, and spread throughout the years, the demons had been looking for a way to end it, the thing they were fighting as smart and as cunning as themselves. As decades became centuries, and centuries became millennia, the demons had struggled for the helm of the sword that was swiping at them, cutting them to pieces and damning them back into their rightful places in Hell. As the menace grew, much like theirs had before, the demons had come to understand the danger that loomed over them, the true purpose of these things and the reason they were to be feared.

As the Byzantine Empire changed and was remolded, the demons followed its lead, reorganizing itself under someone who had a sight for a future that seemed impossible. Shifting and becoming something that it had never been before, parts of Hell reshaped itself into a small establishment focused solely on ridding the world of the threat that had ended the Hellish reign. With the years and movements that passed, and with the intelligence that was gained, the demons became more sure of their goal, individuals breaking off on their own to enact the justice they thought it was time for, sending a message to those who remained that they had to keep their patience in order for it to be right. With the murder of Pope Benedict XI—a message a demon called Emohan had thought would spread fear to their enemies, but had rather been ignored, projected to the masses as a poisoning instead of the brutal murder Emohan had enacted—a signal had been burned into every one of the demon's brains, a sign that they should wait for a simpler time, one in which religion played no part.

Pausing their crusade for over six hundred years, the demons swelled, their numbers accumulating in masses as the world changed. Gathering, and searching for a way out of the growing pit, occasional creatures would be summoned, leading the charge on Earth as well as they did in Hell. Once a good number were called, beckoned mostly by witches or other demons, the plan began to formulate on a scale that was unprecedented. In the time that they had delayed their dealings, the universe had become a different place, something the demons were unfamiliar with. At the turn of the twentieth century, trains were carrying people across lands that were once seen as impossible travel destinations, and airplanes were experiments, connecting nations that had been long divided. With the Boxer Rebellion ending, and with the Galveston Hurricane sending a message to rebuild rather than mourn, the world was on the brink of recovery, many humans assuming that the start of 1900s would be the decade that stabilized the seven continents.

Slowly, the demons began to take their places, lying in wait for a few years more before making their move, striking down their enemies slowly but surely. Killing those they could find, at a meager yet steady rate of six annually, the demons worked silently to keep from raising suspicions, eyes and ears tuned in everywhere, with Hunters on the rise and becoming equal in threat as knowledge was spread like never before. By the late seventies, the battle had begun, a war starting that had had casualties on both sides and had sent the demons back into hiding. The threat was looming in an even darker cloud than the demons could assemble, their enemies seeming to accumulate something over the years that caused them to appear more fearsome.

As time ticked by, the demons recollected, new pieces of information coming to light to be used to their advantage, the ultimate weapon becoming something the creatures could wrap their hands around. Enlisting The Collector, they had realized their vision, the accumulation of the things they needed getting delivered to them timely. All that they needed now was the construction that would lead to their victory, and for the demons that had waited the years that it required to remain patient for the last leg of the ordeal.

As the demon Artizer walked across a field toward a shed built years ago in preparation, the sound of screaming filled his ears, his feet trampling against the dry grass and brush that was strewn across the ground. There was a girl that they contained here, one that they used to test their theories and information on, one that had been swiped from her bedroom in the night and taken to a disclosed area, no Hunter any the wiser. The building was nothing more than a small barn, the edifice unassuming, but the basement below it appearing torturous. From his experience, and from the echoes of the cries, Artizer knew that their captive was housed in the tomb of stone and blood beneath the ramshackle remains, the hut having not been taken care of since its formation in 1909.

No demon could appear or disappear within a hundred miles of it, the building spelled against anything and everything that might be their demise. Inside the shed, dozens of witches remained on hand, their obedience to the demons who gave them power paramount. Inescapable, the barn was a cage for their hostage, the girl nothing more than the demons' lab rat, with a possessed doctor on hand that was used to assess changes in behavior and bruises. All of it was being recorded. As the demons beat, cut, and shot at their captive, they documented the results, the creatures wanting to know their enemy better than they knew themselves, the information to be used when the appropriate time came.

Approaching the shed, Artizer entered through the doorless threshold, a chill following him inside that didn't faze him. Immediately passing through to the basement, the demon nodded at the somber witch awake and huddled in the corner, the frigid air bothering her and causing her to clutch her blanket closer to her chest. In truth, Artizer cared nothing for her, his ploy to pretend he did only an act in order to keep her nearby. Though he could force her to stay, put her in fear of her life, Artizer believed that would do nothing helpful to the cause, knowing that the witch could easily let their hostage go and attempt to run, putting a kink in the system and making for unnecessary distractions. Instead, he feigned his way through concern, noticing that the witch responded to it by amplifying her loyalty.

Heading down the staircase, the screaming he had heard outside became stronger, the girl they kept hidden in the dark reacting to the sound of shoes shuffling against steps as though the demon was ringing Pavlov's bell. By the time he reached the bottom, the shrieking had become ear-splitting, the sound a joyous melody to Artizer, and wearing out the girl whose throat was bound to be hoarse by now. Smiling at her in a way that he was sure would aggravate her, Artizer glanced at his hostage for a moment, the flickering light of a lantern resting on a stool dancing across her face.

The short blonde was pretty, but of course, they all were; her thin frame carrying an energy of combined frustration and fear. He knew from experience that she was scared to die, but also not scared to threaten the demons who wrapped the chains around her wrists and ankles, as though the ties that bound were nothing more than protection for both of them. Though he didn't know her name, Artizer liked to call her Sparky, the nickname both working to describe her mouth and as a way to torment her, his ease in which he spoke to her proving to the girl that the demon she was attempting to terrify was only finding it humorous.

For almost a year, Artizer had been whipping and slashing and beating at Sparky, recording the results of her healing and reaction to the wounds. On the first week that he had taken her, the girl had been quiet and whimpering, but as time passed, she had begun to find her footing, threats of death and exorcism coming once an hour or whenever Artizer attempted to talk to her, to find out what she knew and what she could pass on. With every day, it was the same question, the same one that was answered with a remark that was replied to with a whipping, her clothes slashed apart in the back from all the thrashes. As he trekked across the field to the shack during his daily routine, the demon attempted to find another way to ask, always coming to the same conclusion that no matter how he worded his inquisition, she still wouldn't tell him anything, still wouldn't giving him any information on what he needed to know to win the war the demons had already begun.


	15. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Singer Auto Salvage  
Sioux Falls, South Dakota  
Friday, November 24, 2006  
6:07 AM

**S**am tapped his fingers against the desk he sat at, the computer monitor beside him casting a bright light on the room that was barely illuminated by the rising sun. Through the second-story window, the sky was a muted blue, clouds overhead puffed up after having dumped out all the rain they had once carried, with a small golden hue barely touching the sill. As birds flew by or tweeted from where they were perched on nearby tree branches, the sound of Metallica carried with them in the wind, the tinny sound of "Some Kind of Monster" disturbing the early morning's peace.

Out in the yard, Dean worked on the last of the Impala's repairs, having been up since their return from Pierre. It had been a silent drive back, with the Ranger crapping out on them half a mile from Bobby's and leaving them to walk the rest of the way—Dean wanting to hurry and get back to working on his car, taking it as a sign that "his baby" should be up and running before they took another case. On the pensive walk toward the scrap metal arch signifying the road to Bobby's familiar house, both brothers had been quiet for most of the way, Dean sometimes muttering about something to himself while Sam occasionally asked his brother to repeat what he was saying.

The fight with the demon, The Collector, or lack thereof, had bothered the brothers all the way back to Sioux Falls. Though neither of them knew what to say or what to do, it was clear that the subject was still heavy on their minds. After the demon had left, neither of them had mentioned a word about it, Sam only asking Dean if he wanted his shoulder popped back into place, with Dean biting back a yelp of pain at the uncomfortable relocation of his joint before taking off for the shower. They had left the same morning, Sam packing up the room while Dean washed off the blood, the brothers leaving the place covered in symbols, not caring much about it.

In all honesty, Sam had the sense that his brother was feeling the same as he was: numb to the core. In all likeliness, it was possible that the battle they had just lost had had something to do with The Demon, with the two letting their only chance at a lead as to where to find it slip through their fingers. Sam had thought he had been careful enough, covering the walls with devil's traps that would have cemented anything from The Pit in place, but had instead managed to get himself thrown out of the fight early. Dean hadn't faired any better, getting beat to a pulp before the creature had fallen away from their grasp. It had been terrible, and in the back of his mind, Sam could hear his father's voice:

_"What the hell were you thinking, letting this thing get away?!"_

Ever since coming back, Sam and Dean had gone their separate ways, Dean spending the rest of the day and night following their return out with the Impala while Sam remained upstairs, Bobby gone—still or again, Sam wasn't sure—and leaving them with the house to themselves. Every once in awhile, Sam would get up to get something to drink, watching out the window as his brother put the finishing touches under the hood, before disappearing to the computer room on the second floor, Sam's hunger for knowledge on what could be happening under their noses just as strong as Dean's thirst to complete his restoration of the car, Bobby's words about The Collector having been hired for something big haunting him.

In the hours that he had been alone with his friend's desktop, Sam had searched deep into the Internet, finding sites he had never found before and reading information he had never seen. Though none of it seemed to point him any closer to The Demon, it was a start, some new information better than regurgitated old information. As he saved them all to his favorites, printing out the pages that were particularly useful, Sam's mind had wandered while the printer clicked to life, his brain meandering its way to places it shouldn't be.

It took all of Sam's willpower to keep from imagining how the fight would have gone down had Dad been there, his imagination placing his father in the middle of the action with the man actually taking down the demon rather than letting it walk all over him like his sons had. For some reason, the thought hurt Sam in a way he couldn't describe, as though a new hole had been dug into him, a longing that would never be filled pouring salt into the wound that would never close. The fact that he knew that his father would have been the one to finish The Collector rather than let it go free, to let it complete whatever the hell it was doing for The Demon or whatever, made Sam feel like he was a failure, his brother getting marks for trying. Whatever that demon was up to, it had escaped to finalize its task, and it was their fault that the thing had survived a battle with the Winchesters.

When Sam had been away at Stanford, he would have been fine to never see his father again, his thoughts so focused on school and getting away from hunting that he hadn't given his family a second thought, resentful of them for living the lives that they lead. Now, however, all Sam wanted was to see Dad walk in through Bobby's front door, for the body they burned out back to have been a mistake, and for what Sam had seen at the hospital to be a dream. It pained him every moment of every day, knowing that his father was gone, and it plagued him to know that it had something to do with The Demon. If that thing they had fought yesterday had been working for It, Sam would never forgive himself for letting it go like he did.

Returning to his work, Sam tapped at the computer keyboard as he read yet another website dedicated to specialized demons, his eyes soaking in every ounce of information that they take could as they absorbed the page. Down below, the sound of Dean entering the house, his heavy boots clunking against the linoleum floor, carried upstairs, the refrigerator door opening and shutting coming soon after. Pausing a moment, Sam bunched his jaw as he froze on a word, his stare remaining in place as he listened to his brother's shoes against Bobby's hardwood, the sound not fading but instead increasing in volume. Turning around in his chair as the clunking stopped, Sam saw his brother standing in the doorway, a couple of beers in his hand as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"You getting anywhere?" Dean asked, unfolding himself to hand Sam a drink.

Popping the top against the edge of the desk, Sam shook his head. "No."

Nodding to himself, Dean opened his own beer and took a deep swig, silence growing between them as Sam looked up at his older brother in the doorway, the morning light coming in through the window reflecting off of his green eyes in a way that made them seem hollow and sad. It was a look that Dean had been carrying with him since Dad's death, an expression that was etched into his gaze so deeply that not even the jokes Dean used to cover his true emotions would be able to bury it. Sam had seen it on his brother's face while going head-to-head with The Collector, the demon seeming to react to it in a strange way, as though he couldn't break an already broken man.

Swallowing down a mouthful of beer, Sam's throat burned, his eyes switching from Dean to the window that was now a bright blue. It was strange, the way the weather never seemed to fit the mood Sam was feeling, the way his mind was storming seeming to be the opposite of the sunny day. The sky had been the same color the day Dad had died, the sun overhead beating down on Sam and Dean's necks as they walked heavy-hearted to the taxi that had been awaiting them, the taxi that had taken them to Bobby's. The driver had been nice, not charging them the full amount when he saw how beat-up they were inside and out, and had even wished them good luck once they got out. At the time, Sam had been the only one to return the condolences, Dean walking off slowly toward the door as though he had never seen Bobby's house before, his whole body working mechanically.

Bobby had opened the door even before Dean had knocked, the man seeming to already know what had happened and hugging the brothers tightly, with Dean wanting to be released as soon as he was embraced. From the moment that their friend had welcomed them to his home, allowing them to stay as long as they liked, Dean had distanced himself from everyone, staying out in the yard to work on the Impala and keeping silent until That Girl had appeared a few days later. Since then, Dean had started saying more and more, but never anything about Dad, his two subjects seeming to either be about The Demon or his car. Though Sam wanted more than anything for his brother to open up about how he felt, about what he was thinking in terms of their father's death, Sam had a feeling he was getting nowhere fast, his brother standing in the threshold now, just as tight-lipped and melancholy as before, with a pensive feeling wavering around him.

Suddenly, the sound of the front door slamming shut interrupted the stillness, Sam jumping to his feet and Dean setting down his beer at the unexpected noise. Following his brother down the stairs, Sam saw Bobby standing in the parlor of his house, the room crammed with books and about to be stacked with more, Bobby's hands filled with at least twenty new volumes that looked older than old. Setting them down on the dilapidated desk in front of the fireplace, Bobby cleared his throat as he turned around, something in his narrowed glare telling the brothers that their friend already knew what had gone down between them and The Collector, though the man's expression seemed understanding rather than Dad's brand of failed, post-hunt anger.

"You boys alright?"

"We're fine," Sam lied, nodding toward the new tomes. "What are those?"

Tapping his finger against the cover of the topmost volume just like Sam had against the desk upstairs, Bobby's eyes switched between Sam and Dean, his gaze eventually falling on the younger of the two before speaking. "Couple of books I borrowed from a friend up north. Figured you might wanna take a look at 'em since I know you already cleared through mine. Few of 'em specialize in demons and Dante's theory about the Inferno. Might help, might not. I didn't get a good look at 'em before I left."

Grinning for the first time in days, Sam reached forward to grab one of the books off the desk, Dean nodding his appreciation toward Bobby before heading back out to finish the Impala. Making his way toward the kitchen, Bobby began to mess with a couple of dishes while Sam perched himself on the worn-out couch pushed against the wall, all thoughts of The Collector and his failure erased as his absorbed himself in what he hoped would lead him and his brother down the path to finding and killing The Demon.


End file.
